


Peggy Bell I Love You Please Be My Wife

by twowritehands



Series: Peggy Bell I Love You Please Be My Wife [1]
Category: Cranford - All Media Types, Return to Cranford
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Compliant, Cranford-AU, M/M, Other, Romance, boy in a dress, cross-dressing, femboy, posted all at once beginning to end because we do, secret canon, trans-gender girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 13:00:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1606088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twowritehands/pseuds/twowritehands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically Peggy is a boy in a dress. Few know what she is, and to make sure the secret is never found out her mother and her brother Edward never let her go into town but for church, therefore she has no friends or connections. Until now, Peggy has accepted her prison in favor of getting to wear the clothes she is comfortable in, but when the dashing Mr. William Buxton arrives in Cranford with a smile just for her, she dares to want more out of life—and William dares to give it to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_August 1844_

 

With her eyes closed, Peggy imagined that the bold chimes of the church bell nearby were the sounds of the sunshine warming her upturned face. She often entertained these sorts of thoughts. What if the senses were tied more closely to one another so that one perceived everything in God’s world simultaneously with all five senses? The sunshine would sound like a bell, and smell like a marigold, and taste like…. _an orange_ , she thought with a crooked smile.

“ _Peggy_!” Mother hissed, wrenching her elbow with her clawing grip. Peggy jumped and looked around herself. But they had only arrived at the graveyard at long last. The walk from their cottage to Church was a long one, and it could not happen that Peggy would make the journey without getting lost in her head, though her mother would want it so. The woman always became quite cross if Peggy did not answer a question immediately, or if she voiced aloud the kind of things that filled her head. 

Several members of congregation were lingering about in the shaded yard of the small country church, but Peggy nor her mother or brother spoke a word to them for they knew no one well enough to have proper conversation. Polite smiles and returns of good morning were all that the withered Bell family could manage these days. Peggy looked at the grass as she walked, ashamed that it was her doing that had moved the family from their ancestral hometown, where Edward had had a large circle of acquaintances, and Mother, too, a small string of devoted friends. Father’s entire family had been there, and now, because of Peggy, he lay buried in this small village far away from all who knew him, surrounded by strangers who had gossiped about the Bell family from the moment they had settled into the cottage.

Seeing her father’s grave still hurt, and though it was her darkest secret and something she wanted to shield from God, Peggy always wished that her mother had died instead. She wished she had been left the single parent that had still smiled at her with a modicum of affection….She knew these thoughts to be sinful, especially on Sundays and hallowed ground. She attempted to clear her mind of it, but that was hard to do when Mother threw herself to the grass, crying loudly,

“I feel the burden of his loss so much more on Sundays! For after I weep here, I must rise and go into Church to worship the God that has arranged our fortunes so!”

Four bonnets popped over the hedge, and Peggy felt shame like little fish swimming in her stomach. “Mother-- _people are looking at us_.”

Edward’s face remained the impassive mask of boredom he wore these days, but Peggy saw how his shoulders twitched, and he closed his eyes. Peggy did not know if her brother wanted to turn around and shout at the gawkers or turn to shield Peggy from the curious gazers. He was not always the sweetest brother, but when it counted, he was often the most chivalrous. It had been he who had defended her back home, when the truth had slipped out….

Mother visibly pulled herself together at Peggy’s reprimand—following the last order given by her husband. _Now we mustn’t do anything to draw attention to us here at Cranford. I would prefer we were isolated in the country if the alternative is my child’s unhappiness. Here she can live unbothered...._ At the memory, Peggy held her breath to blunt the sharp pain of his loss.

Mother gestured for the flowers in Peggy’s gloved hand and the vase in the crook of Edward’s arm, “Lay down our tribute to your father.”

Peggy knelt neatly in her skirts and began to arrange the blooms as prettily as possible while sensing the eyes of the little old ladies watching like low hanging branches on a tree, their whispers like the leaves brushing over her skin.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 

Miss Matty knew that their chosen hiding place was not all together discreet enough, but it was so rare that anyone ever got to lay eyes on the Bell family that she could not help herself. She took comfort in the belief that even Deborah would have allowed it for just these few moments before mass. The mysterious Bell widow and her two children had changed a great deal since last Miss Matty had stood in their humble little cottage with Deborah.

The late Mr. Bell had often taken Deborah’s notes on sermons, and Matty had taken to swapping recipes with Mrs. Bell. The family had seemed all together pleasant, happy, and ignorant of the rumors circulating on the matter of their abrupt move from Yorkshire. Deborah had not allowed for questions, or else Matty would have quite liked to hear what had happened to the girl, for she had looked perfectly sweet and could not have gotten herself into any trouble at only 13…

Now, five years later, the three of them stood at the gravestone in old, but well-kept clothes. The boy, at least, was wearing a semblance of the latest fashions, but the girl’s dress was seasons out of date and barely fit her. There was something about the poor child that reminded Matty terribly of a ghost—young Peter had looked at the world with the same forlorn distance for many years before being sent away. But of course, his adventures in India had done wonders to cheer his spirit, and he had returned to her a new man.

Matty decided that this morning she would pray for the Bell girl so that she might one day find the joy of life as Peter had evidently managed to do beyond England.

Beside Matty Miss Pole shook her head at the sight of open grieving, “The man’s been buried fourteen months. Why does she not wear mauve?”

“Perhaps she does not care to be thought…brisk?” Miss Tomkinson suggested. The father’s illness and subsequent death was the quickly eroding excuse the family had for not attending social gatherings; no mourning should last this long.

“There’s nothing brisk in demonstrating fortitude,” Mrs. Forrester said with quiet dismay. “We are many of us widowed.”

“It is Peggy I feel so very sorry for,” Matty said, eyeing the poor lonely girl. “She is of age to be in company, instead we see her only in Church. I fear she has no friends.”

When the session of polite interest was over, Matty insisted they move along to the church, where they lined up in the front as usual. The Bell family, Matty knew, would stand in the back and slip out the moment the final hymns were over. After prayers, in which Matty asked that Peggy Bell find happiness and then thanked God for Peter’s safe return, her thoughts became general and it was as she was thinking of little Tilly and the next Hearne child that a stray dog interrupted the hymns and set distress upon many. The moment the congregation broke, Matty dispatched from Miss Pole’s loud cries of horror at the mess to be found on the alter and went in search of the four legged culprit.

The animal was not one she had seen within Cranford before, but she knew it at once to be a domesticated thing and feared that it was a sign of her dear brother back from the docks with his belongings. Outside the church, it, nor Peter, was to be found. The only sign of life was the Bell family, stopping once again at the graveside. She wondered again if it would be so very out of place for her to ask for Peggy’s company herself. With Mary gone, there was room for a companion….

“Miss Matty!” her friends called, “Look who has come back to us!”

Turning, the aged lady perceived a most handsome young man, and knew him at once by his golden yellow curls, for those had not been changed by years. She hurried forward with delight, “William! My dear!”

“Hello, Miss Matty,” he greeted her with the broadest and warmest smile, the kind that told Matty that Cranford was never easily forgotten by those who left it. She was flooded with the memories of young William and found that the man who stood before her now was the perfect outcome of good breeding and expensive education, for he radiated a comfortable confidence and kindness.

“We had so hoped to see you back in Cranford,” she said happily, squeezing his strong hand. How the years so changed boys into men was still utterly bewildering to Matty. She could recall when William was beneath her line of sight, with a voice as softly pitched as an angel. He towered over her now, with a sonorous voice most comforting.

“We have had tidings of your mother and are sincerely grieved,” Miss Tomkinson said on everyone’s behalf, and William accepted cordially, explaining such an unannounced visit,

“Father has been yearning for home, and I came ahead of him to open up the house.”

A dog’s bark drew all their attention. Matty looked for Peter before all was explained by William’s possessive cry of,

“NAPOLEON!”

Matty breathed easier, and grinned. At least it was not Peter’s dog after all. A spirited beast better suited a young man than one of Peter’s age.

“How can he be expected to behave with such a name?” Mrs. Forrester asked. Matty laughed, “Never mind that, dear. Let us make haste. Peter will return today with his gifts from India!”

<><><><><><>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>< 

The dog had been his mother’s, and therefore perfectly spoiled.

As he chased the thing, William silently vowed, in a voice he did not realize sounded like his father’s, that no dog of his would be so boundless. What a sight he must be, dashing about, unable to catch his own dog. He felt a blush rising higher on his neck, for he had never been good at sporting games and such a vivid, public reminder of all the failed foot races was beginning to tempt his mood toward the dark side. At last he succeeded in rounding up his half-trained little brother and collared him forthwith.

“Bad dog!” he chided loudly, for the sake of all watching. Perhaps they would believe that it was a young dog, in the middle of training.  A vase of flowers had been scattered on a settled grave, and a young woman knelt gathering them hurriedly. William did not recognize her as any of the local girls he had left behind years ago, nor did he recognize the name on the stone. He knelt, speaking only to her, though the proper thing probably would have been to address the widow herself, or perhaps the man of the family.

“I am so sorry,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter,” her voice did not carry the exact pitch he had expected, but his surprise he contributed to her Scottish accent. “The vase is still intact.”

“But the flowers are spoiled.”

“It was a dog, it was not deliberate,” she insisted, meeting his eye by accident. She stopped talking at once, and William, charmed by her forward no-nonsense answer lifted to his feet to see about correcting the dilemma nonetheless. Flowers for a parent’s grave were of great importance. Were it his own mother’s burial place he would not be able to leave damaged buds. He sought out the rector, who frowned down at Napoleon, but was otherwise happy to help.

<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>> 

“Peggy should have refused the rector’s offer of fresh blooms,” Mother said on the walk home, “Lord knows we have little but our garden is replete with roses.”

“It was a friendly act, Mother, not a charitable one.” Peggy snapped. The dog owner had arranged for the buds, and it was only the young man’s fine clothes that made Mother feel insulted. Had he been equal to, or below them in class, she would have had less to say about it.

“I, for one, am glad we agreed to it,” Edward droned. “I had no intention of dragging my carcass all the way home and then going back again just to fill that vase. Besides, I must finish a book-keeping exercise, and I need a cup of tea. I should be in my room.”

Peggy held her tongue rather than speak her mind on the matter of returning. Edward could very well shrug off a trip into the village, for he was free to take one whenever he wished it. As for her, these Sunday excursions were all she had beyond the safety of these green meadows and lonely, bubbling stream.

“The water in the pail had a brackish taste this morning,” Mother said, drawing Peggy out of her thoughts, “You might go to the stream and draw some fresh.”

It was phrased as a question but stood as an order, one that riled Peggy. It was never Mother fetching the water, or doing the washing; she sometimes did not even bother Edward to do the heavy lifting—for it was still in the back of the woman’s mind that she had _two_ sons, and she would disrupt Edward’s studies for nothing.

It had always been like that. Edward first, what was best for Edward. Father had been the only one to consider what was best for her. He had allowed the dresses (first only on special occasions, but more and more by degrees as he had come to finally know the sound of his second child’s happy laughter) and it had been Father who had picked out _Peggy_ and made it so that it sounded so natural….

While it did not settle well on Peggy that Mother still thought of her partly as _Gregory_ , she did not object to the chore of refilling the pail. The stream was a pleasant ten minute walk away, and she enjoyed the solitude and time to think. The sun had climbed to its highest seat and the heat now fell on all of Cranford like the long wool drapes of a king’s robe, thick and palatable.

Taking her time so as not to perspire, Peggy reached the stone footbridge in due course. There, she dropped the pitcher into the water and drew it up by its string, made happy by the familiar sounds of the water and the birds and the cooling wind. She loved this spot, so far away from everything. Here where the water below pulled the air into a relieving breeze, the sun was warm on her face again, and she rested against the stone edifice to enjoy it.

That funny dog ruining today’s roses…how wonderfully unpredictable life sometimes was. To think that that dog, and his golden haired master, had existed in the world, in this town, long before today, on course to collide with the Bell family this very morning, while Peggy had chosen her bonnet with the distinct thought that nothing interesting ever happened at Church.

Then came a chance meeting and an exchange of words beyond meaningless good mornings—though had she seen his face before speaking she shan’t have been able to. The moment she had glanced up into the gentleman’s eyes, her voice had failed her, and the only thought that had bloomed in her mind had been the ridiculous,

 _He’s what the sunshine looks like_.

Now she thought of what she might have said, had she been better prepared to interact with one so fine. Introductions would have been made, perhaps an invitation to tea extended. Would Mother have allowed her and Edward to go? Might she be sitting in a big house, drinking tea like a real accomplished lady?

 _But of course you wouldn’t_ …she thought angrily to herself. For one thing, she was hardly accomplished at all. She would be such a wreck of nerves that she would surely spill her tea all over herself. And for another, more important reason, she could not make it a habit to be looked at by anyone. A glimpse at church, whilst everyone’s thoughts were turned heavenly, was one thing, but to step into someone’s home and begin speaking about herself….the truth would out itself in a heartbeat and then they would be ruined, forced out of England.

Dwelling on these possible outcomes, Peggy became glad that the gentleman had not extended proper introductions after all. On her way back to the cottage with fresh water in hand, her thoughts were stolen away from the topic of him by the state of her beeswax in this heat and the question of tea.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 

The last time the Buxtons had been in this house, Mrs. Buxton had been its mistress. Her absence was felt, to be sure, but in these walls, the madam had been vibrant—in short, here she had _lived_ and so these memories rested more comfortably on her survivors than at the place where she had died. It was days since William had been joined by the rest of the family, and the last of the long journey had at last been slept away. This morning was a comfortable one, and William did not care to leave the comfort of his bed, though the dog had made his usual laps around the house already.

“You spoil him worse than my mother,” William chided his sister. Erminia had entered a short while ago with her breakfast tray for she did not care to eat alone, and now sat in the bay windows of his room with Napoleon draped on her lap, feeding him the remains of her breakfast meat. The young woman grinned with her tongue between her teeth. “He is a little prince.”

William sighed loudly, rolling his eyes to the ceiling of the room, but laughing out of simple happiness, the kind that had at last began to prevail after so many black weeks following his mother’s death. To be in his childhood home again, in company as entertaining as his vivacious adopted sister, and freed from the shackles of school so that he might pursue something of interest to him only magnified the contentment into merriment.

He rolled onto his back and dropped an arm over his eyes. “Did I tell you that I had to chase him all over Cranford on my first day here? He desiccated the alter in Church and then ruined the flowers on the grave of this poor girl’s father…”

Erminia gasped lightly and seemed to be speaking more to the dog, “He could not have! Not little Napoleon!”

“He did,” William insisted, laughing despite the twinge of embarrassment that he felt whenever he remembered the event. Before he knew it, he was relating the tale in vivid detail concerning the unknown girl. “I do not think she was offended from the way she spoke, indeed she seemed amused. I sensed a sharp mind—Anyway, Bell is the family,” he said quickly, hoping that his interest in her had not been too obvious. “Do you know anything about them?”

“I do not,” Erminia began but Napoleon’s sharp bark interrupted her and the quick little dog was off her knee and sprinting from the room, yapping and growling. Someone had just stepped into the house downstairs.

“WILLIAM!” Father’s voice shouted, furious. “WILLIAM!”

So it was a lady at the door. William lifted his head to trade a look of intrigue with Erminia, who frowned back. He sprang to his feet and dashed out of the room to be of assistance in holding the dog off a lady’s skirts. At the top of the stairs, he recognized in a glance old Miss Matty and descended the steps two at a time in order to aid her sooner. Father, whose personal idle happiness had yet to return to him, looked dark with anger mixed into his misery. “Control that animal at once!”

Napoleon had never been ‘that animal’ to Father before, but ever since losing his wife, Mr. Buxton could not even smile at the pet they had doted on together—nor at William, for that matter. The blunt impact of the widower’s anger felt like a sucker punch to the ribs, and William bristled against it, gave his sincerest apologies to the lady, and led Napoleon out of the room.

It was not fair that Father treated him thus in front of company, as if he were still a child!

It never occurred to William that in open shirt and no shoes, master of a wild dog, he was little more than a boy still. He preferred to think of himself as a grown man, capable of leaving school of his own accord and seeking out a worthwhile career. That was not something, he thought, that boys did. It took a character of exceptional caliber to change the course of destiny and no amount of frowning and sharp words was going to make him reset his charter for the old way.

He dropped into a chair in the morning room and turned over the paper resting on the arm. Father had so recently vacated this spot that the cushion was still indented and warm. William lifted out of the seat straight away and sought a new one not tested and approved by his father. The settee was uncomfortable, but offered more light by which to read the paper, and so William was satisfied that his choice was the better one.

Napoleon leapt onto the cushion beside him and begged to be petted. William dropped a hand on his little skull and idly scratched the canine’s ears as he skimmed the print.

Erminia entered the room shortly, speaking over her shoulder to Father with coy contempt. “Then I shall adjourn to the morning room. Then it will not matter that my hair is not dressed.”

William snickered and winked at his accomplice, who found it enjoyable to vex her godfather on William’s behalf. Father’s voice followed her into the room as he explained to Miss Matty, “She has been to school in Brussels, being turned into a lady.”

In her own way of rebellion, Erminia crossed the room and sat elegantly at the piano like the lady she had been _turned into_. “What shall I play this morning?”

William gave the name of his favorite waltz. She grinned and commenced to pounding out the notes as loudly as she could. William laughed and Napoleon fled the commotion.

Half an hour later, when Father returned to the morning room, he frowned at his god-child. Erminina looked sincere. “I do hope I did not truly offend Miss Matty with that display. But I could not help the little joke.”

“Had you played anything but a waltz, I do not think the joke would have occurred to her. As it is, the pair of you made a shining example of the disparity of the modern youth.”

“Then we are made happy to hear our endeavors are a success.”

The young ones grinned importantly at each other and Father frowned down at William’s bare toes. William dropped the paper and his smile with a sigh. “I could not dress and fetch the dog off her at the same time,” he protested. Before Father could properly begin his rebuttal, Erminia side railed the argument. “And was Miss Matty’s visit worth all our troubles, do you think?”

“I think it was,” Father said. “For she has agreed with me that politics is a noble course for William, and is at this moment, arranging for suitable society. There is to be a gathering at this house tomorrow. It seems there have been additions to Cranford in our absence, and the Bell family has a son and a daughter the match in your ages. It will be fine practice.”

“Practice for what?”

“You will need to circulate among all manner of families in all circumstance if you will be in politics.”

William sighed, “I do not want to be in politics, Father.”

“Want is not relevant. You will because I say you will.”

“It is _my_ life, and _my_ happiness so I think _I_ should have say over what I do!”

“and you will be an engineer,” Father sneered, “you’ll help break up and _blow_ _up_ land that has been cherished by English families for generations all just to spite me!”

“It is not for spite it is for the FUTURE!”

“What concern of yours is the future? I tell you, the future will come and go whether you have a hand in it or not. There is no need to traipse about with your chest out as if what you do will _matter_. England is strong the way it is--the might of the world-- and it will not be changed by this fashionable fad called the railway!”

William stormed off, slamming the door behind him.

<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>> 

Cranford had welcomed the Bell family warmly upon their arrival six years ago. The six matriarchs of society had called after the third day, and were pleasant company for Mother, though thirteen-year-old Peggy had stayed mostly out of sight and not uttered a word in her undependable voice (it had been, at the time, in that awkward phase where it wanted to drop, but she had never let it. An accomplishment she was most proud of.)

The most regular of visitors had been the Jynkens sisters: Miss Deborah, who was not afraid of some debates with Father over sermons, and the lovely Miss Matty, who could talk hours with Mother about anything. As Peggy grew taller and her hair grew longer, she began to sit with Mother and these women who did not know the truth, and so Peggy knew them, and liked them (more so Miss Matty than the imperious Miss Jynkens, but even _she_ had had a smile and called Peggy ‘girl, nice girl.’ Peggy had been sorry to hear the woman had passed away so suddenly….) Father’s, and then Miss Jynken’s, deaths had kept the families apart in mourning, and so the Bell family had fallen into seclusion in the green meadows… until this unusually eventful day.

The first thing to happen was an elaborate dream—wherein, Peggy had been something like the shoot of a bud, trapped in the hard-casing of the seed, buried in the cold earth, forgotten… until with entrapping warmth, she had been able to crack out, and as a raw, fevered thing, she pushed and pushed and _pushed_ through the soil until all at once, she broke out, broke _free_ into the blazing hot space of open air and burning sunlight.

She had woken in a flushed sweat to find that something dreadful had happened in congruence with the stirring dream. Peggy did not care to have any sort of emissions from that part of her body, and had cleaned up the mess with a hard chin and narrow thoughts, determined not to think of the one who had reminded her so vividly of the sun, if it was to have this effect on her. It was perfectly ridiculous when she did not even know his name.

The second thing was the arrival of an invitation. The stationary was very expensive, the handwriting a most elegant script. The Buxtons, returned to Cranford after nearly ten years, wished to acquaint themselves with the family that had joined Cranford in their absence, having learned about them from Mr. William Buxton’s chance encounter at Church….

Mother at first did not want to respond, for she knew not how to turn down such an amiable request from ones so refined as the Buxtons, but Edward had rightly pointed out that to decline would cast more suspicion onto them. They would go. Peggy would enter another’s house and speak to those who did not know the truth and _could not_ know…

Peggy sat staring at this invitation for hours, attempting to imagine the event in clarity. She did not know where to start. The golden haired gentleman would be there ( _Mr._ _William Buxton_ , the name suited well) and they might discuss their meeting in the church yard….but then what?

Her thoughts circled the gentleman and who he might be beyond the kind, but forgetful man they had encountered. Mother had had plenty to say about his lack of introduction, but Peggy found it charming. He would not have thought about it, naturally, if his family hailed from these parts. To him, _they_ were the strangers….With the mystery of his name and origins at last revealed, Peggy hoped now he would feature less in her musings. To be so diverted by a particular gentleman was an alarming state, and Peggy found she hardly cared for it.

The third and final thing to happen was the guests for tea. Miss Matty arrived with Miss Pole in tow and the touch of the outside world in the lonely sitting room made Peggy feel excited in a way that distressed her. Was she so unhappy the rest of the time that a pair of old faces with old gossip brightened her day so drastically? She feared what that meant.

Home used to be her fortress, the only place on earth she was allowed to wear dresses, and be herself and feel safe and happy….but ever since Father had left it, it was not the same….she was no longer fulfilled, but left wanting something once again, something she could scarcely name, and with no one to sit long hours with and talk it into shape.

The closest she had come thus far, was the little green sprout. In inexplicable, undeniable, steadily building urgency, Peggy wanted-- _out_.

Now here stood her chance. An invitation for luncheon… what was luncheon anyway?

“Luncheon is a cooked repast in the middle of the day,” Edward said tiredly. Peggy blinked, shy to discover that she had mused aloud; a glance at mother proved how unrefined her behavior had become.

“Peggy we will have less idle musings and more replenishment of the cups.”

She closed her lips and focused on serving the tea, but her heart was pounding away from her. This was happening. Others wanted to know her, and Mother could not stop her from going. She would be Peggy Bell off the beaten track. A terrifying challenge to be sure, but one that she felt equal to meeting. She had shaved very closely this morning and applied her beeswax with the utmost care. Her hair was neatly twisted, and her bodice modestly (and _evenly_ ) stuffed. She was ready to meet the world as the girl she felt at heart.

Excitement so profound her body became rigid coursed through Peggy from head to toe when mother spoke in surrendering tones, “I wonder how we might attire ourselves? Should I retrieve my lace out of its tissue?”

Peggy lost her breath. Lace? How very fine…but she hadn’t anything like that. After Miss Matty and Miss Pole had left the cottage, Peggy and her mother at once went to her wardrobe. Mother took out the brown silk. Peggy looked at the unattractive shade of brown, the outdated cut… “Can I not wear your lace instead?”

“My lace?” Mother cried, incredulous. “And then just what would I wear?”

“But, Mother, I must look as feminine as possible,” Peggy insisted. Mother could not argue with her, but did not agree either. With a smirk, the older woman shook the gown. “This dress is _silk_. It will do to keep you feminine enough. _Lace_ or anything more fetching will draw _unwanted_ attention,” she said pointedly.

Shamed, Peggy looked down. She supposed her desire to look pretty had less to do with blending in and more to do with taking William Buxton’s breath away as he had done hers. Contritely, she took the dress as her father’s voice filled her head in memory of his sternest lecture.

 _God does not intend for all to marry, Peggy,_ he had said in this very room. _It is not in his plans for you to catch a husband else he would have better equipped you. You must raise yourself above base desires, my child, and find the path he has set for you…._

Peggy didn’t like to go at all if she was to be so out of place in this old garment. With her spirits on the floor, she began to dread her debut.

If only, though, she had been allowed to meet the world in a less intimating setting, somewhere far from the golden-haired man who put her so ill-at-ease, where she would not be reminded so much of the dream, for in it beat the steady pulse of a thing that lived inside of her.

 _Rise above it, Peggy Bell,_ she told herself. _You cannot have a husband._


	2. Chapter 2

The brown silk rustled sensuously and Peggy liked the weight of it swishing at her legs as she walked the road with Mother and Edward. It had not looked fetching in the trunk, true, but on it was a different dress. She felt rather glorious; almost like an empress….an empress of the wild, green hills of Cranford…She even had something like a fortress, with her regal solitary existence, her stone bridge and edifice….

“You must sit as upright as you can,” Mother instructed. The nervous woman had been doing nothing else all morning. Peggy felt like she had heard everything twice already. “I will cough thus—“ Mother demonstrated a little throat clear, “if I see your posture lapsing. Indeed I shall cough each time you do anything amiss.”

The tight knot of tension in Peggy’s belly constricted. If she did not stay focused, then her mother would surely sound as if she had a cold. Peggy silently resolved not to lose herself to silly daydreams today—though that would be easier if she felt better prepared for the encounter. Her only practice at conversation was the dry, uninteresting talk of recipes and household tricks that Miss Matty shared with Mother. Beyond that, Peggy felt equipped to have a satisfying philosophical debate like the ones she’d had with her Father, but that, she knew, was not a proper topic for luncheon.

The appeal of making a social call had lost its fervor in Peggy’s breast. She did not see the point in suffering the etiquette of society if she could not have stimulating conversation of the variety that had been robbed of her by her father’s untimely death. With every step, Peggy became more and more certain that she would not enjoy this with Mother and Edward both present to cough and scowl at her at every turn. They would have her present nothing but a blank slate, when she was as varied and interesting as this wall.

“---Peggy do you pay me any attention at all?” Mother snapped. Peggy looked around,

“I was looking at the wall,” she said, “….so many shades of grey.” She could not count them now, on the move, but she felt certain there was a shade to match every secret in her heart.

“Shades of grey?” Mother scathed. Peggy sighed and did not bother to further explain herself.

<<>><<>><<>><<>> 

William could not decide if he was bored or not. His family and their guests sat around the table with food on their plates, discussing the general topics, all of which had William numb with disinterest. The only redeeming quality of the conversation was that Miss Bell seemed equally as wearied of the topic as he, and as he passed stolen moments to chew his food, he wondered what was in her head when she stared at the table cloth like that…

“Mother wants me to take on Holy Orders, like my father,” Mr. Bell said. William was interested to learn that the father had been a minister only because it gave a general idea of the household.

“But surely the training is very long and tedious?” Erminia asked.

“And all for a curacy worth 70 pounds a year! I should much rather be an attorney. There are hundreds if not thousands to be made, and it’s all done in office hours, for very little trouble.” Edward said.

“The law of England is a splendid course of study,” Father agreed, “That, or the Classics, are the only things worthwhile.”

Edward poured himself more wine, and William noted that while he and his father were still on their first glass, the level in the bottle had dropped significantly.

“I believe there is a bridge into the future,” William said to the young man across from him, “and it is not made of dead men’s words, but of iron, coal, and steel. I have thought I might write to Mr. Brunel and see if he will let me assist him in his work.”

“Has this man not got a fine contempt for money?” Edward asked the room at large. Erminia bristled beside William.

“He is not impressed by it, if that is what you mean,” she said.

“I never find the slightest joy in figures.” Father defused the situation deftly, “For all I know the salt works made me, what, seven pence last year?”

Light laughter hammered around the table, but even that did not stir Miss Bell from her deep thoughts. William peered with intrigue at the girl. Mrs. Bell coughed lightly and the noise penetrated her musing like nothing else. She visibly jumped and looked around herself.

William subdued the urge to grin.

“You should engage an agent, sir. I have studied for just such a role.” Edward spoke to Father importantly, and Erminia could not have been held off the pompous note in his voice even if she were a collared dog.

“Where did you go to school?” Erminia asked. The direct question quelled the young man instantly. The mother spoke for him,

“He was tutored at home by his father. And then took lessons through a correspondence college.” Mrs. Bell answered.

“I am sure that that is just the thing to do,” Miss Matty hurried to agree, “now that the post is so efficient.”

Ever the solvent for the wounds she inflicted herself, Erminia changed the subject swiftly. “Won’t you have some fruit?” she directed this question to Miss Bell, who had been silent for too long. The girl brightened and spoke with that same unhurried openness that William had first met,

“I’m very fond of oranges--” she began, but something in Miss Matty’s look quelled her, and she amended primly, “but perhaps some grapes?”

William looked at the large platter of assorted fruit and spied enough oranges to go around. He reached to make the first selection, and took up the biggest orange he could lay hands on, catching Miss Bell’s eye as he did so. She smiled crookedly and took her preferred choice after all.

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Peggy allowed herself the fine treat of an orange only because others did so as well, though it was only the younger members of the company who partook in one. Peggy shouldn’t have liked being the only one eating such a cumbersome and often messy citrus.

“Pay attention, my friends,” William announced to them, standing and holding up his orange, “I shall now demonstrate to you the fruits of my education at Cambridge. How Best To Enjoy an Orange!”

With great fanfare and showmanship, bringing loving sighs and eye rolls from Erminia and giggles from Peggy and Miss Matty, William first turned his orange over in his fingers, examining its peel, sniffed it, held it to his ear and tapped a knuckle to it, and then positioned his thumb over the stem and--shoved it in most violently. Miss Matty gasped and began laughing and clapping as William immediately put the wound of the fruit to his mouth and squeezed, sucking loudly.

His father shifted and cleared his throat with slight discomfort, but he was smiling from the sounds of the women’s laughter. Even Mrs. Bell was chortling. Erminia, spine straight in an imitation of William’s showmanship, followed his process to the letter. She rolled the fruit in her fingers, smelled it, held it to her ear and tapped it, and then plunged her thumb inside and sucked.

Edward skipped the nonsensical steps at the beginning, pushing his thumb right in. Peggy opted to do the same, not wishing to draw attention to herself by behaving as though she were center stage. Such a place was for beautiful people like William and Erminia. The juice gushed under the intrusion of her thumb, ran down her hand. She mouthed it up from her skin without thought, her mother’s throat clear being the only thing which alerted her to the indecency of licking her hands clean.

She enjoyed squeezing and sucking all the juice out, though, and laughed with the others as they all did so at once. Erminia paused to laugh and say, “This is most un-ladylike; they would never teach a thing like this at my school is Brussels. They cringe from anything fun and worthwhile.”

“I did not learn this in lecture, Erminia,” William supplied, “It is among the things one learns from his peers, after class hours.”

“Well,” the beautiful lady returned with ease, “I myself learned many things from my classmates, but I shouldn’t, I think, repeat them here. Gentleman would find them quite shocking.”

Edward choked on his orange juice. Peggy gasped but when Erminia met her eye and winked, she couldn’t help but laugh with giddiness from feeling involved in a secret club just for women. Mr. Buxton looked horrified, “Ermina, that will suffice!”

“You are not, I think, meant to take her seriously, Father,” William comforted genially, “Erminia only likes to rile you up for making her go to that school in the first place.”

“You’re parents chose it for you, my dear,” the man said to her lamentably.

Erminia sighed, “And, God Rest Their Souls, it is the only reason I haven’t given it up as William has Eton.”

“Do you see, William? _She_ respects her parents!” Mr. Buxton teased, “You might take a leaf from her book.”

William’s smile seemed a little forced, “It is not out of disrespect that I discontinue at Cambridge.”

Tension settled over the party, but then to break it Peggy boldly put forward, with a motion to her misshapen and practically juiceless fruit, “I rather enjoy this. Tis like partaking from perfectly spherical glassware… Glass blown in this shade would be very pretty,” she added, delicately wiping juice from her lip, as she pensively examined the tint of her orange peel, “like a church window.”

“The sun through it would be a most fetching sight,” Miss Matty agreed, “Very much like the sun in color.”

“We are blessed with a goodly amount of sun today,” Mr. Buxton said with a motion to the garden, “A charming day. We should, I think be out of doors to enjoy it. Shall we retire to the garden?”

On the way out, they were greeted by the dog, who barked happily at the company. Erminia scooped him up and gave him a loud kiss before setting him free in the grass. Peggy’s mother offered to the company the memory of passing splendid summer days in their garden back in Scotland on days as fine as this. “Edward was quite the battledore victor when he was a boy, always challenging—the other boys.” Mother fumbled.

Peggy’s heart leapt into her throat, for she knew her mother had nearly said the name _Gregory_. It was plain by the look of horror on her face. Edward glanced sharply at her, but her mistake lived unnoticed by the rest, for Erminina was quick to say,

“I myself have always been good, have I not, William?”

The tall gentleman hummed ruefully down at her. “Hmm, I remember some cheating every once in a while.”

“Cheating? I? Is that what it is called when a girl beats a boy?”

Miss Matty’s laugh was a pleasant sound. “Oh, I recall these arguments fondly,” she told the young pair. “You were both so hot tempered. But your mother always dealt with exceeding grace. I recollect vividly one occasion when she had the two of you kiss and make up. Do you recall?”

William and Erminia grinned at one another with a special twinkle in their eyes.

A challenge was set, the ladies versus the gentlemen. The badminton gear was fetched and four racquets and a shuttlecock arrived at their table in the garden with the promptness of a well-executed household maintained under the luxury of money.

Peggy and Erminia took their racquets into the grass but William and Edward were held back by discussion with Mr. Buxton regarding Edward’s schooling versus William’s ghastly decision to leave his studies.

Erminia poised the feathered cork high above her head and pitched her voice as if speaking to spirits in the other world,

“Shuttlecock, shuttlecock, tell me true, how many years do I have to live through?” she released it and managed to bop it back into the air three times before it missed her racquet and hit the ground. She sighed with her hands on her hips, giving Peggy a bright eyed look of mirth, “…oh dear, I shall be dead before I am three and twenty! Still better than 50 years in Cranford!”

Peggy laughed lightly, opening up a little to the fiercely beautiful woman. For the first time, she felt as if they could truly be friends, and a sprig of hope shot through her. Perhaps Erminia would teach her how to be as fetching and coy as she…

“Erminia, we agreed we would play battledore!” William strode over with Edward close at his elbow, and Erminina sighed at Peggy as if they already shared a secret,

“Come along. If we do not, they will think themselves the victors.”

It had been years since Peggy had partook in sport of any kind, but she found that whatever skill she had possessed as a boy returned to her. She did not miss the shuttlecock even once, batting it neatly back across the invisible line each and every time it came her direction. She could tell by the way William need only step or extend his arm to return her shots that he was being easy on her. Indeed, it was so easy, Peggy wished to really smack the thing and turn it into a real game.

Edward was the first to miss a shot, and scowled darkly at the ladies.

“You two are not playing like the fair sex should. Peggy in particular is striving far too hard!”

“She is naturally quick,” Erminia was quick to Peggy’s defense. “As, might I add, am I. Must we feign incompetence just to spare your pride?”

Peggy gave her brother a pointed look. It would not do for him to get worked up over any of this. It was only a game. He put the feathered bobble back into play. The shuttlecock flew back and forth between the teams only twice more before Erminia’s hit sent it sailing into the shrubbery. “…..oh look, Peggy! It’s landed in a bush. How shall we manage without a man to fetch it for us?”

Peggy giggled. Erminia lifted her eyebrows at Peggy’s brother. “Go on, Edward, get it.”

“You had better fetch it, I think, lest you inflame her further,” William said sagely. He went to fetch it, and Peggy accidentally met William’s eye. He smiled at her, and she looked at the grass, heart beating loudly as if she had been really challenged to keep up in the game.

“We’ll see who gets the greater sport from this!” Edward hissed as he returned. Peggy was glad that Erminia hit the shuttlecock so forcibly back at him.

“Mine!” Edward called when William made to return it, “Send _that_ one back to me!”

It flew at her, over her head, and Peggy pushed herself backwards, wishing to make as impressive of a hit as Erminina had done to show the superiority of girls, but she trod on the hem of her gown and stumbled. The ground crashed into her, and all of the air in her lungs leapt away from her as if her life force had escaped its imprisonment at last.

“Oh dear Peggy!” Miss Matty cried. Peggy did not move, face in the grass as she attempted to draw breath. It was painful to do so.

“Miss Bell. Miss Bell,” William sounded truly concerned as he crouched beside her.

“I fear she is injured!” Miss Matty exclaimed somewhere behind him. William filled all her senses, looming in her vision, his smell quite like linens straight after washing day, hot from the sun and crisp from fresh air.

“She is only winded, I believe,” was his correct guess. His hand rested lightly on her shoulder, “Let me hand you up, Miss Bell.”

“I am well,” she rasped carefully. Her voice was not entirely in her command at present, and she feared speaking above a whisper should it drop too low. “I have not broken any bones.”

His hands closed around her fingers and she felt the strength in his arms as they tensed and lifted her to her feet. Cool air touched her on her flank, and she reached to discover that her dress was ripped open on the left side, revealing the stark white linen of her shift.

“Oh your poor silk!” Erminia cried, “Never mind. At least it is not a new one.”

“It is her best!” Mother shrieked, pale faced to have a half-dressed Peggy such focused center of attention. It was rather alarming. Had the dress torn any closer to the front then the bandages holding her breast padding would have been revealed. “It must be stitched forthwith before the seams fray further!”

“I do not think I have any thread in brown,” Erminia said regrettably. Peggy felt her face darken in a light blush at the implication that brown was not a fashionable color to keep.

“I have thread of every shade at home. You can walk with me to my house,” Miss Matty said, throwing her own shall around Peggy’s shoulders.

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“This dress was my mother’s before it was mine. The cut is very out of date.” Peggy rambled, just to fill the silence. She remembered the day it had become hers. Father had purchased his wife a new wardrobe so that the older dresses (in need of mending anyway) could be altered to fit his daughter for every day.

This gown had been the most splendid thing then, to a hopeful girl of thirteen, the folds of silk and the large sleeves had been a dream. She remembered putting it on and standing patiently as Mother pinned it for her. Mother had not said a word, but she had smiled….It stood as one of the few moments of quiet understanding between them.

“I do not think it necessary at all to chase the fashion,” Miss Matty said, bringing Peggy back to the present. The sage words made her feel ashamed for a moment of her constant wish to have every pretty dress she laid eyes on, but she did not take it to heart. These older ladies were simply from a different time, and could not comprehend the advantages to the new styles that had many of them clucking their tongues. And furthermore, Peggy’s heartfelt desires were based in more than mere vanity but in a discomfort she had not felt since she wore trousers...

“I do not like to be noticed,” she admitted. “I’m more likely to stand out in a shabby gown than I am in a neat one.”

A small commotion sounded at the door, and Miss Pole’s voice then carried through the house in its usual, urgent shrill,

“Do not stir yourself, Martha, I am assured of my way.” A moment later, the lady stepped into the room and noted Peggy as she spoke without preamble, “Miss Matty—Peggy Bell you are displaying your stays!”

“She has torn her dress,” Miss Matty insisted, “and it required fine stitching.”

Miss Pole did not even blink at what amounted to Peggy as the most extraordinary occurrence of her life. As the two spinsters set to talking, Peggy slipped into deep thought on the matter. She had to allow that for most, attending a luncheon and falling over were regular events…. _well_ , she nearly smirked, _perhaps not falling over_. What a clumsy one she must be in their minds now. She hoped it would not be talked about too much in her absence. She did not like the notion of people discussing her, no matter the context.

Miss Matty’s gasp broke into Peggy’s thoughts, and she hastened to catch up to the conversation—Miss Pole had just delivered some kind of lamentable news.

“Reverend Hutton is alerted and has harnessed up his trap. It is already poised by the rectory gate; the pony eating oats out of a nosebag. You will be glad you did not buy a turban now. _Already_ they are saying the magician will be cancelled. Cranford must prepare for a most melancholy chapter.”

It was about Lady Ludlow, Peggy was almost entirely certain. It made the most sense, as the noblewoman was the oldest in Cranford.

The moment of silent reflection in the sitting room broke suddenly with Martha’s distressed call for Miss Matty to please come to the kitchen. The old woman gasped and left the room in such a hurry she knocked into Miss Pole and did not apologize or even pause. Miss Pole quickly followed and after a moment of sitting alone, Peggy made herself free to investigate. She found the house maid Martha holding her distended stomach, Miss Matty fretting over her while Miss Pole assumed command with a rapid fire of orders.

Peggy had never seen a pregnant woman before, let alone one so very close to motherhood. Her palms began to sweat forthwith, and she drew shaky breath.

“Peggy,” Miss Pole finally spoke directly to her, “Make yourself decent, hasten to my house and tell Bertha to come here. She will require her Holland apron and a pair of kitchen sleeves….”

Happy to have something to do by way of helping, Peggy left the house as quickly as she could trot and did as she was bid. Bertha need only hear the beginning of Peggy’s winded explanation before she began gathering all required instruments. It eased Peggy to see that the maid had evidently done this type of thing before.

She helped carry the items back to Miss Matty’s house, feeling a deep pull of satisfaction at being a part of this….such a sacred part of womanhood. The atmosphere was charged with an exhilarating blend of secrecy and know-how. It rather reminded Peggy of a top-secret recipe passed from Mother to daughter and not to be spoken of idly.

Once Bertha was set up in the house, there was nothing else for Peggy to do but allow privacy. Reluctantly, she said goodbye to Miss Matty and went on her way. A smile stayed on her face for the goodly portion of her journey home as she considered the unique and wondrous gift that was a woman’s ability to have children. Vessels of life itself….but of course that was how her smile faded by degrees until she was openly crying as she walked.

She could dress and act like and sound like a girl all she wanted, but no matter how hard she tried, she would never equal one as beautiful as that. She could help deliver a hundred babies and still not belong to the sacred club—not that she would ever be allowed to stay and assist the actual birthing. As a lady, one had to be married to do such a thing and there it all came apart at the seams for poor Peggy, who would never be allowed to give herself to anyone.

In stark reality, she was no one’s wife.

She sobbed in gasping, low sounds before she could regain herself.

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Cranford was a quiet place with black ribbons on every door, the sound of the bell rolling over the whole town in a mournful lament of the fine lady who had, for so many years, dwelt in the big yellow Hanbury house.

Born and reared in Cranford, William’s childhood contained an array of memories in the happy garden parties hosted annually by the late Lady Ludlow. These events were illuminated in his mind as being Important; the way everyone in Cranford spoke of Lady Ludlow it was impossible not to realize her rank in all of England and the privilege it surely was, then, to be allowed to mingle and eat and play in her grass.

William remembered the Lady as being tall and imposing with a ruffled collar on her dress like a queen of old. In truth, he remembered less of her than he did of her children. All of them boys several years older than he, the four Ludlow Brothers had seemed to be an exclusive club, as if they possessed in their destiny the luck that if anything of any importance was to happen to anyone in Cranford, it would happen to them.

They’d been a raucous but likably entertaining lot--all but for the youngest, Septimus. He, William could remember, had always been rather prudish with an unpleasant sneer. Guilt turned over in William’s gut when he recalled wishing that any one of the other brothers had survived in Septimus’ place. It was a horrible thought, wishing the man dead when he was now the sole survivor of his family.

What a horrendous sound this bell must be to him, for how many times did Lord Septimus hear it while mourning a brother? Then he was made to mourn his father to it, and now his mother.

These thoughts saddened William, though he hadn’t thought even once of the Ludlow family in the ten years since leaving Cranford. As he walked in step with his father and Erminia on the way to church, William began, in want of comfort, to miss the seaside. He had not thought he would, having the whole time missed these green hills. But here he moved along the dusty road bordered on each side by large swaths of every shade of green, and he could think of nothing but the various shades of sand and ever changing color of the water and the way it was never quite the same color of the sky, though sometimes it had been close.

The Buxtons had always been respectable church goers, but when her doctors had advised the sea air they had been taken from the church they knew best. Combined with Mother’s frail health, the practice thereafter adopted by the family was to go nowhere her chair could not be easily pushed, and on Sundays, to speak of the spiritual things missed at Church. She had never been afraid of death, and had spoken of returning to God with conviction, but as it distressed both William and his father, she did not speak so plainly very often. Usually, then, on Sundays she had her son wheel her onto the beach, and there they passed a pleasant hour discussing the beauty, the power, and the unnamable color of the ocean….

She had found a way to speak of God to the son who had not wanted to hear of Him, and now, after nineteen months of such a religion, William felt on the verge of paganism, worshiping the water in place of The Almighty….but in the quietest places of his soul, he could not help believing that God, whatever He be, resembled most closely for human comprehension, the ocean itself.

Beside him, Father turned to the west and breathed a sound of wonder, lifting an arm to indicate the glow of the sky, the mist in the fields, and the distant tree line. Erminia and William turned to survey it in silent wonder as well. All three of them breathed deeply, and William smiled, knowing with firm certainty that God could not only be the ocean.

How strange it felt, to be walking to a church house, to worship indoors, away from all scenery. Then he remembered the point of church. It was not so much a personal labor as a social one. Father had announced that they would be attending today as yet more practice for William as a politician with unlimited resources in connection and likableness.

_God help me_ , he prayed. The last thing he wanted was to circulate—a close second would be to embarrass himself and his family with the argument that was sure to come if he tried to resist. While his intentions were to avoid politics, he would go along with this scheme of making more friends; after all one could never have too many of those, and he had always achieved it with relative ease.

Erminia was to date his oldest friend, but discounting family such as her, he had a satisfying number of great acquaintances from school with whom he kept in touch. If only they lived close enough for regular meetings, Father would be less anxious about his standing in society. Indeed, a more varied selection would not hurt Cranford at all, William thought. Erminia had caught fortune’s favor with the delightful Miss Bell, but he himself would not mind if there were one or two other fellows with whom he could associate, so as to break up the endless talk of money and accounting that Edward Bell preached.

At the thought of bringing his Cambridge friends to Cranford, William could not help but grin crookedly at the horizon. To see the rambunctious Anthony or the fastidious Steven trapped in this small town with not but church to look forward to would certainly test everyone’s patience. He would send the invitation regardless and not be subdued by the pair’s refusal to cloister themselves. After all, it was not as if William could even entice them with the promise of meeting beautiful women. They already knew Erminia, and as for Miss Bell…

He did not think a shy minister’s daughter would take to or understand at all, the personality of Anthony Stark nor would he have the general tact to let her alone when she fell to thinking too much. William knew instantly that she would hold nothing back if provoked, and it formed as a sharp image in William’s mind, that of two stones striking against one another, a spark.

_Better not do it_ , he thought. It was the first rule of an engineer, after all, not to play with dynamite.


	3. Chapter 3

Father’s grave was unchanged. Mother sank to her knees and worked up a good cry within a minute (her personal best in time) but Peggy was not paying attention today. Her eyes swept the crowd of arrivals until she spotted someone familiar. The Buxtons had arrived, at last. William Buxton laid eyes on her at nearly the same moment and swept his hat off his fly-away curls at once, calling a greeting. “Hello, Bell family!”

She watched his long legs carry him across the uneven lawn, the way he weaved so neatly around the townsfolk who greeted him and shuffled out of his way, some not quick enough, but he apologized sincerely to anyone he jostled. She did not realize she was smiling, but did recognize a tremendous lifting of her spirit since learning of the death of Martha and the child.

She had spoken to Miss Matty and the others about it, but their words of comfort had been only that: words. They had not reached Peggy where they could do any good. Now, with William fast approaching, Peggy had little time to decipher why the sight of him alone should be the solvent to her sorrows, before he was upon them.

Edward turned stiffly. “Buxton, good day.”

William nodded at her brother and the words were out of Peggy’s mouth before she could stop them, “You haven’t brought your dog today, Mr. Buxton?”

A boyish grin stretched William’s face, pinning his cheeks with two deep dimples. “Ah, no, I have not. After the incident his first day in town, Napoleon has been banished from these grounds for the remainder of his life, I am afraid.”

“Poor thing,” Peggy said. “I do hope you are at least reading the psalms out to him at bedtime. You must think of his soul.”

Edward’s dark eyes glowed at Peggy from under his low eyebrows, and Mother had stopped her theatrical weeping in order to stare, transfixed at Peggy in abject horror. Neither could believe their eyes or ears as William laughed heartedly at her joke. “Oh, all dogs go to heaven, Miss Bell. That is their charm in the first place.”

“Very well,” she conceded with a grin.

“Now I do hope you are not embarrassed, but my conscious prompts me to ask if you are truly well after that tumble yesterday.”

Peggy blushed. “The only injury was to my dress, and it was easily mended. Thank you, Mr. William.”

Smiling, he bowed his curly head. “I am glad to hear it. Of course I knew you were in safe hands with Miss Matty, the sweetest in all of Cranford.”

“Indeed she is,” Mother agreed as Edward nodded, bored.

Peggy’s eyes turned to Miss Matty, and then naturally to Martha’s final resting place as her thoughts were dragged back to that day. Sobriety took the smile from Peggy’s face, but she did not return to the deep-set woe she had been in. It seemed impossible to be angry or saddened by her lot in life when her circumstances allowed her to know and speak easily with the likes of William Buxton.

He was a handsome man, to be sure, and so easy to speak with…at last, she solved the question of his effect on her: Peggy had known only one other in her life to which she could speak her thoughts without scorn, and he lay in the ground under her feet. She had lost that freedom until now, given back to her in a small way by the casual acquaintance of William Buxton.

“…It is Martha Hearne,” Edward said next, when William had followed Peggy’s sad stare and saw the fresh grave marked twenty paces away.

“She was Miss Matty’s house maid,” Mother supplied. William’s face stretched long in sorrow, “Oh, dear. How dreadful. It seems death could not be satisfied with only Lady Ludlow. Was it a sudden illness?”

“Child birth,” Mother answered. “The child, they say, was another little girl.”

“I was visiting Miss Matty when Martha went into labor,” Peggy said somberly. William looked down at her, an open expression of deepest sympathies and curiosity. Wordlessly, he offered an arm, and Peggy explained what had happened as they departed from her father’s grave in favor of the humble little wooden crosses, one large and one heartbreakingly small.

William listened to her admitting that she had felt proud and excited as she fetched the chambermaid. She had not meant to confide these things, but they spilled out readily (and with her father’s gravestone at her back, too; suddenly the world had promise again.) She edited her speech, however, leaving out the heaviest sections, of which William could know nothing about, as he and the rest of Cranford believed that she, as a natural born girl, had every right and opportunity to bear children one day.

Peggy found that she loved the idea of being presumed so capable, and she let herself pretend blindly that it would happen in her future.

“It is such a noble thing…Mind you, I do not mean to be arrogant on behalf of my sex,” she smiled crookedly, “But who can deny the everyday miracle of childbirth? To bear and raise children….I long for it,” she gushed shyly.

William had been listening with his head tilted to one side, his soft eyes resting on each cross in turn and then, lastly, on Peggy’s face as she spoke. She did not notice this straight away, for she was looking into the middle distance, where she possessed the body her heart and mind thought she ought to have….When she had went as far as her web of lies allowed her to muse safely, she blinked  and he stirred, looking away before she glanced up at him.

“I believe you will one day make a very splendid mother. Not like Erminia,” he laughed, shaking his head. “If how she treats my dog is any indication, then she should not be left in charge of any human life.”

Peggy laughed. “You make her sound so horrible! I have seen her with that dog, and she loves it dearly!”

“A little too much. Discipline in moderation is a fine thing,” he mused.

Peggy considered the family that he and the beautiful Erminia would form together and her heart ached with pure envy, but the idea of two such beautiful people uniting felt so natural that it never occurred to her that it might possibly happen differently. However, the vision of a grey haired William scowling at his children for eating oranges imprudently felt so outlandish and ill-suited that she could not help but ask,

“Then you will be a strict father?”

“Only as strict as I must be,” he insisted, “I shall have two sons and they will be modern individuals set loose to fulfill their heart’s desires once grown. This is the only fault I can hold against my own father. He will not open his eyes to the modern world, and he will not stop treating me as a child.”

“You are his only son. Perhaps he is simply not ready to accept the fact that he is no longer relied upon. My father once said that is the merit in a daughter. Sons eventually refuse help as a matter of pride, but a daughter will always need her papa. No man can be loved more so than by his daughter.”

“But what of a man’s wife? Does not the mother of his children give him the most love?”

Another of her wry smiles made him shift his stance as Peggy reminded him, “She was someone’s daughter first, Mr. William. You have to allow that the purest portion of her heart remains at home and can never be taken.”

“You have delivered a convincing argument for the sex, Peggy Bell. I shall never be disappointed if I am granted not but daughters.”

“Then my work is done,” she gave a curtsey in the manner of Erminia, and William laughed.

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Mr. Buxton and William were not speaking by the time they reached the house. What had begun as merry praise from the father about his son’s good work discoursing with all of Cranford’s church goers had escalated into another argument regarding the use of such sociable skill. In deference to the Sabbath and their own weariness at having risen early and walked to church and back before tea, their disagreement had foregone raised voices and mired them both in a stubborn silence lasting the whole of the journey back.

Erminia sighed happily when she stepped into the house, removing her gloves. “At last, a friendly face,” she said to the maid who took her cloak. “Thank you, Anne. Now if you would both excuse me,” she said to her godfather and William, “I am weary and made still wearier by the hostility prevailing betwixt you. If there is civility to be had, I will be in the drawing room.”

Mr. Buxton shot William a dark look, and it was met with a reproachful one.

“Forgive us, my dear,” the old man told his ward. “We do not mean to ruin your holiday.”

“Then cease this everlasting battle and allow William his freedom.”

“Ah, I see he has turned you against me as well.”

Erminia sighed but Mr. Buxton did not allow her to speak, raising his hand to stay her response. Wordlessly, he left them standing in the hall. Erminia turned on William who lifted his shoulders. “I am sorry the morning was spoiled. I had hoped to avoid it.”

“As evidenced by your compliance to circulate in the first place. I do believe uncle saw himself victorious for the hour.”

“I do not mind making friends,” William said as they settled in sun drenched chairs. Napoleon was asleep under the settee. “I would, however, mind building a career around how many I am able to keep. The thought puts a chill in my bones. I wish to be loved for me, not whatever power I hold in government.”

“Well said. And while we are on the topic of friendship, might I inquire after the welfare of Miss Bell? They were gone so quickly after the service I was unable to even say hello.”

“She is well. No injuries to speak of, but her spirits were quite low. Miss Matty’s maid has not survived childbirth, and it seems Peggy was in the thick of it all.”

“Oh dear. How dreadful,” Erminia said, in shock at the notion of such a gruesome scene. From the drawer of the desk, she pulled forth the materials to compose a letter. William noted how easily she had skimmed the surface of the topic, like a stone across water, nothing at all like the sure-footed plunge Peggy Bell had taken into the topic in the church yard.

“The remarkable thing is that it has not frightened her from the idea of her own children one day,” he said. “I mean, think of it. Would not you yourself be forced to reconsider the necessity of having children when the brutal labor of it might kill you?”

“Indeed,” Erminia prepared the ink and paper, her mind on her task and not the conversation. “But then I have plans beyond that of a humble minister’s daughter… I mean nothing by it,” she insisted having caught William’s reproving look. “I quite like Peggy Bell! She is a sweet girl, but you cannot deny that the best she can hope for is a good husband and a house to run, with healthy children to fill it; while I myself have far greater options to consider. If she were to let one mishap dissuade her from her only course of life, then she will deserve nothing and have nothing. We all of us must fight for the things that fill our hearts with joy, even you can attest to that.”

William’s face stretched in a warm smile. “I shall thank my lucky stars then, that the thing I hope for is not likely to kill me.”

“Though your father might,” Erminia teased. She began to compose her letter and William fell silent, feeling as if he had stumbled over the threshold into a new world. How could Erminia offer any opinion on motherhood without giving it the same deep thought Peggy Bell had done? It was a serious topic, and yet Erminia cast it off like a bonnet with tangled ribbons, a project for others to deal with and sort out for her.

He wished he could speak to his mother again and glean what her thoughts had been on children. Had she had that same simmering fire in her eyes like Miss Bell when she spoke of the son she would have? Or like Erminia and Brussels was it simply a thing she performed dutifully with thoughts elsewhere?

But William knew the answer to his questions already, and his desire to speak to his mother had more to do with simply seeing her again than solving a mystery. He knew that there had been a fire in his parent’s marriage and that his mother had been most attentive and spirited in her duties as a parent. There could be nothing more admirable in a girl than that.

His thoughts still circling the blond little Scottish girl and the hungry way in which she had dwelled on the subject of family, her eerie insight into the hearts of boys and girls in regards to their parents, and that closed lipped, crooked smile of amusement she gave when he could not best her opinion with one of his own...

Who was this girl? How was it that at the age of nineteen and having seen little beyond cottage walls, she knew more about herself than a world traveler such as Erminia, or a full grown man such as himself? How could it be that sitting in solitude afforded her cast-iron opinions and insightful observations the likes of which shook all that William knew and understood like a bear shakes a tree?

What else did she have worked out so neatly in that head of hers? What other jewels of thought shimmered in her mind? He could not shake the feeling that this was not the extent of Peggy Bell, no matter what Erminia said, she could not be destined as not but a humble housewife. It simply did not match with the strength, daring, and hope that burned in that girl as hot as a kitchen stove.

Erminina wrote her letter, and William stood and made a lap around the house. His intention was to change his thoughts with the scenery, but there was no escaping the conundrum of Peggy Bell. There was something about her, something sharp, something endless….something set her very far apart from that family of hers. It was unfair to label her a minister’s daughter and be done with it.

William paced. When Napoleon woke from a nap and found him wearing a track in the garden, the two of them passed an hour at fetch, but even then he could not forget the girl that thought of dog’s souls….

At dinner time, Willam sat and ate with his father and Erminia, and there was no talk of his future, but by this point in his constant deliberations, he had tentatively lit on the idea that the thing which set Peggy Bell so apart from everyone else in his head was the simple truth that, unlike all before her, she had his attention.

Regardless of the outcome in this battle over politics versus engineering, William began to fear that the Bell girl was someone vitally important to the rest of his life.

 

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Peggy swept the stoop clear of the dust and leaves she had pushed out of the house in her diligent cleaning. It was a chore that passed the time and she found it quite enjoyable most days. Nothing soothed her like a clean house, though there were the days when it was clean enough and she could not stay inside where everything sat so silently in its place without argument, and so on those days she partook in a walk to the stream and back. She could not imagine having a servant to do these chores in her stead. What did fine ladies _do_ with their time if it was not to run the household with her own merits?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the muffled thuds of hooves on the ground and the bright call of greeting,

“Good day to you, Miss Bell. I come charged with an errand.”

Peggy stood in breathless, alarmed joy to see the handsome Mr. William again. Astride a horse he was every bit as dream-like and charming as she’d been remembering him. As he swung down from the saddle, Peggy recalled in an uncomfortable flash that she was at home. Her mother and brother were just inside and would have heard the horses, if not William’s hearty greeting. Was her beeswax complete? Was her hair in order?

She gave a quick curtsey. “Mr. William. Hello.”

He advanced, and Peggy turned to keep ahead of him. She burst into her front door, broom clutched in front of her. The hallway was tight and dark, she felt as if she was leading him into a narrow cage. Then they turned a corner into the kitchen where Edward was enjoying some apple as mother prepared them in jars for storage.

Mother and Edward looked up and saw William Buxton, his hat, crop and the paper news under one arm. Peggy stood speechless with alarm, unable to look at the gentleman who seemed to fill up the small familiar spaces of her friendless home. His hair and riding jacket—of the same shade of golden brown—brightened the world.

He beamed at Mother and Edward and bowed to them before proclaiming proudly, “We are in want of company this tea time. I brought along a second horse to speed the journey back.”

“Oh, what a thoughtful gesture!” Mother replied, thrilled. Then to her, “Peggy, run upstairs and fetch your brother his top boots.”

“Have you brought another crop?” Edward asked the gentleman as Peggy hurried for the stairs beyond the kitchen. Before she had drawn even with her mother, however, William Buxton was replying with polite correction,

“I am afraid you will not be comfortable unless you wear a skirt.” His gaze fell on her, kind and not mistaken in their direction. “Miss Bell, Erminia longed to see you and asked that her pony be saddled to suit. Mr. Bell,” he addressed Edward next, “Father thought you might enjoy the _Chronicle_.” He stepped forward and dropped it on the table. 

Peggy stood in dumb shock for the space of two or three crashing heartbeats, and then she moved into action. There was nothing Mother or Edward could say or do to stop her. They did little more than stare with open mouths as Peggy put away the broom, hung up the apron and put on her bonnet.

With her cloak tied around her shoulders, Mother finally found the voice to sound gracious and happy for her daughter. “I will look for you around dinner time, Peggy.”

“Thank you, Mother. Edward.” She quit the house in eager strides, sensing William’s wordless bow of departure as he followed her. A glance over her shoulder showed her an amused grin on his face and he placed the hat back on his head.

“I have been combating boredom all day. This invitation is most welcome, Mr. William.”

The horse assigned to her was a pretty white creature with kind eyes, but the saddle on its back made it a very different thing than the pony she had had in Scotland. Still, she approached it as if without fear and new which foot to put in the stirrup in order to seat herself in the side-saddle the way of properly taught riders, though this was her very first encounter with the contraption.

Seated prettily on top of the four legged beast without incident, she smiled at William when he mounted beside her. They set off in the direction of his home and the motion thrilled Peggy as much as it scared her. She had never left the house without a member of her family before. It was not entirely comprehensible to her as yet that she was to be at the big beautiful house with only the delightful Buxtons as company. She did know that without Mother and Edward there, it would be a new place entirely.

“My father liked your brother very much,” William said after a stretch of silence. He seemed to be attempting to make up for the blatant disregard for Edward’s company. Peggy did not think it at all necessary. She rather liked that her brother had been put in his place. Furthermore, the gift of the _Chronicle_ , did, at least, soften the blow and would give him an hour or two of occupation.

“I’m glad of that.” Peggy replied, giving him a smile and trying not to fidget too much in the saddle as the horses made a hill and began climbing. Oh, lord. If only the way was flat she could manage. She hoped the hills did not get worse than this.

“And you’ve quite captured Erminia’s fancy,” he continued, “I think she plans to talk to you about frocks and waltzing.”

“I’ve heard of waltzing,” Peggy attempted to sound as at ease as he, “My mother says it is the most indecent thing.”

“Forgive me. I fear you are distracted.”

“Please, do not think me rude if I do not chatter,” she grasped the horse’s mane as the saddle rocked under her.

“Oh, I don’t expect you to chatter, but I am concerned that you do not like the horse.”

“It is not the horse. It is how I am seated,” she admitted.

“Pardon?”

“This saddle is—forgive me, but it is rather ridiculous. I feel as if I will fall off at any moment. I cannot concentrate!”

“It is a side saddle,” William explained with a rueful crook in his lips, “Erminia cajoled me into trying it in a race once. I must say I agree with you.”

“It is not just side-saddle, it is _any_ saddle!” Peggy fairly burst. “I have never ridden in one until today.”

He reined his horse in next to hers, dismounted with a few cheerful words in regards to remedying the situation and helped her to the ground. She did not wish to stand idle as he removed the cumbersome gear from the horse’s back, but she thought she would only be in the way if she attempted to help. As he worked with the multitude of buckles, he glanced twice at her before speaking,

“Perhaps you can settle a debate between myself and Erminia. She thought to write you, but knew not how to properly address the note. Pray, is your given name Margret? I believe Peggy is diminutive of that name, correct?”

“It is.”

He chuckled pensively, “I thought so. How strange it is that names should be altered with affection into something unrecognizable to its root. I myself am sometimes known as Bill to my William.” He shook his head, seeming more inclined to fondness of the practice than irritation.

“Margaret becomes Maggie, which is then Meg, which somehow then adopts the P,” Peggy explained, looking up at the frothy clouds as she contemplated with her own fond chuckle. “The same goes for Mary becoming Molly and then Polly with a P again. I think it is a Scottish practice.”

“I know not how William becomes Bill,” he snorted, “It is nearer to its root than Peggy is to Margaret, but I do not know of any other names beginning in W that are then switched to B…”

With a proud jut to her chin, Peggy boldly put forth, a flick of her eyes down his vest and back, “Without sense to it, then it must be something dreadfully English.”

He laughed fully, in that moment swinging the heavy saddle off the horse’s back, making it seem nothing like as heavy as she knew all the leather must be. “That it is, Miss Bell! Sometimes I find myself preferring Billy to the exceedingly overused and stuffy _William_.” He shifted the weight of the saddle in his hands and frowned, “Indeed, that must be where Bill got it’s beginning… How very boring a beginning compared to the mysterious rules in the language of the Scots.”

William had fallen into thought, and Peggy put forward, “But I am afraid you are wrong, and that Erminia is correct. Though my name has origins within another, I was never christened Margaret. My father had always been so very fond of the name Peggy and was delighted to learn he had a daughter, for he had her name already prepared.” The memory of the day her father renamed her and christened her with holy water in a cross on her forehead hurt her heart. “I never want to be called anything else.”

 _Gregory_. It was very well she wasn’t in company too often. She knew that if she were to become acquainted with anyone owning the name she’d been forced to hold to in beginning half of her life, then she would be forever jumping at the sound of it or—worse—turning to answer the call.

“You speak fondly of your father. You must miss him terribly.”

“I do,” shying from the pain of his death, she thought of happier things. “He and I were each other’s favorites. He loved philosophy. Whenever he would set to teaching me my catechism, we would end up in discussion that would last well into the night. It became such a habit that we did so often for years, long after my Bible lessons were complete.” She omitted the part where, often enough, she was in frightening states of tears and woe during these discussions, for they had much to do with—everything.

_Could He have made a mistake when he made me?_

_God makes no mistakes, Peggy_.

_Then how can I be this way? Why would he make me like this? I hate this body! I HATE it! Yet I am trapped in it! WHY WOULD HE DO THIS ON PURPOSE?_

William smiled with a hint of his own bereaved sadness, “My mother often voiced a longing for my father and I to have such a bond. Alas, the older I grew, the further apart we drifted. We still get on well enough, I suppose. But it is nothing as special as what you describe. Sometimes I feel like a stranger to him…”

“The trick is to show him who you are,” Peggy offered with that same boldness as before when she’d teased the land of his heritage, “All men remain strangers to their fathers when they only open up to girls.” His gaze snapped to her so forcefully that she instantly withdrew the statement. “I am sorry! I—I spoke beyond what I understand. I do not know you or your father enough to comprehend the delicate nature of your relationship enough to put forward advice. Forgive me. I—“

“Miss Bell, you need not apologize. You are not wrong in your judgment, and I do believe your advice is something that I have been in need of hearing. Thank you.”

She grinned at the grass, lacking the courage to meet that kind green gaze any longer. He held out a hand, which she took, and he helped her onto the bare back of the horse. Swinging astride the pony, Peggy thought of something to say, and gave the explanation, ““When I was growing up, we never had a side-saddle. We had no neighbors either and no fear that I might be seen.”

“You are bolder than I took you for.”

“We must change the saddle back before we get to town,” even she could hear the change in her voice now that she was seated more securely. She met his eye, “So I can make a decent entry into Cranford.” She kicked the horse into a gallop and called back with a thrill of playfullness, “Dare you to catch us!”

Galloping again after so many years was exhilarating. She could feel the power of the horse where she gripped with her thighs and the wind in her hair and clothes as they flew down the hillside and up another.  Behind her, she could hear William’s horse thundering along after her, and she could not help a wild laugh.

She felt _alive_.

At the crest of the second hill, she reined the horse to a trot and allowed William to draw even. Her heart pounded and her extremities tingled. Below her, all of Cranford lay in its neat little rows under a sky as blue as a sapphire, blotched with clouds as white as winter snow.

The second horse snorted indignantly as William reined even with her. On his face shone a smile brightened by exertion. His hat was nearly blown off his head. He righted this as he spoke, eyes searching her face.

“You are a most _peculiar_ girl, Miss Bell.”

Her throat closed as her heart jolted. _No!_ she feared. Could he have guessed it from the way she rode?

“I did not mean to offend you,” he said quickly and it occurred to her that it was something of an insult to any girl, but he smiled so kindly she forgave him at once. “I only meant to say that you are unlike anyone I’ve ever met. There is something about you which holds the attention. Not that I…” he blushed a little, “That is to say: I do not mean to sound so romantic. Forgive me if I gave the impression of making love, Miss Bell. This is not a declaration of _passion_.” He smirked at himself, “I shouldn’t want to frighten you away with an attempt at _that_.”

She giggled, burning on the inside. He sighed, brow furrowed at her in curiosity, “But after you have given me such pointed and surprisingly insightful advice I feel we are friends.”

“I should think that we are, Mr. William, what with the sharing of woes concerning our fathers and the exchange of good advice.”

“Such things _are_ the building blocks to lifelong dependency on one another’s company.”

“You would be the first proper friend I’ve had in Cranford, Mr. William.”

“Only William,” he scoffed. “No formalities among such good friends.”

“Of course. And you will know me as Peggy.”

He smiled, still gazing analytically at her. She wished he would stop as she began to fret again that her bee wax needed replenishing. What if he spotted a place on her chin where she’d missed with her razor? She fought the urge to feel her skin for prickly heads of hair rough on the pads of her fingers. She felt heat in her cheeks at the very idea of having to explain herself in the event of any of her careful tricks failing her and the wrong sort of traits becoming suddenly visible to others.

What was worse was the thought that she _would_ _not_ _have_ to explain herself because everyone would just keep smiling and holding to polite manners only to turn to each other and gossip the moment she was out of sight. In a small town such as Cranford, she imagined the rumor would be spread evenly into every crevice by sundown on the third day. In a flash, Peggy realized that she did not want her new (and only) friend learning her secret in anyway such as that. How would that do? It simply wouldn’t. Not among friends.

William might make it well known that he found her so curiously interesting—it would certainly be hard for him to hide his interest in the presence of people who have known him since childhood—and so such a scandalous revelation would paint him the fool. Peggy thought she would rather go back to wearing trousers, waist coats and shorn hair before she would have William feel ashamed of their friendship for one moment.     

 _Also, it would be best_ , her sensible side (disguised in her father’s voice) argued, _that he know now before further feelings are invested by either party_.

They reined to a stop and dismounted. Once again, she stood to the side and let him work the saddle back into place. “William, now that we are such firm friends—“ Here his eyes gleamed with merriment as he fastened buckles, “might I confide something in you of the utmost delicacy?”

His lips dropped from a smile into a line more serious, and he took a step back, but his eyes were shining with burning curiosity. “As the best of your limited supply of friends, I can hardly deny you.”

The acknowledgement of their friendship emboldened her further. She straightened her spine, “What I am about to reveal to you cannot be repeated to _anyone_. Not even Erminia. I like her a great deal but do not trust her yet well enough to share this. I tell you now because already I know that _you_ can forgive easily and see things for how they _should_ be instead of how they _are_.” He began to look alarmed. She pressed on. “It is not a bad thing, though it is very shocking.”

“What could it be, then?”

“Before I say, I must hear you swear never to tell another. The happiness of my entire family will be ruined if you break this confidence, even to members of the clergy. It is why my family left Scotland. It is why we have remained so secluded from society. And it is why there is something about me which you cannot describe.”

“All of that and yet you claim that it is not a bad thing?”

She grinned weakly, “My father and I were quite settled with that opinion. Though, perhaps, the less philosophically inclined could find fault with our verdict. I _will_ say that it is nothing which brings harm to anyone. Expect perhaps my mother’s sensibilities.”

“Peggy—“

“Swear to me and to God that you will hold my secret as though it were your own.”

“Alright. I swear it, Peggy. I swear to God not to tell but, what in the world? You have made me very alarmed. I must hear this or never sleep again.”

At the very last moment, her courage failed her. She could not utter a sound. He waited as patiently as he could, at last stamping a foot on the soft grass. “Good God, won’t you speak? What is it, Peggy?”

Blushing, she looked down, and grasped the first excuse that occurred to her. “But now is not the time. We are expected at your house. I shall tell you, soon. But first we must find a place where we may speak on the matter at great length without interruption, or else it would be ruination.”

“ _Ruination_?”

“Please,” she said as she settled into the uncomfortable seat. “You must strive to pretend as if I have said nothing. If you can resume the ease you had before and maintain it during tea, I promise, William, I will tell you what it is.”

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	4. Chapter 4

To court a normal girl would be easier, of this William was sure, but with the same conviction, he knew he did not want to court a normal girl. Peggy Bell had been intriguing before, but now, with her massive secret, he burned alive with the need to know that confidential thing. He did as he was told, and pretended they had talked of nothing but the weather on the way to the house, that she had sat in that ridiculous saddle the whole way without breaking custom or painting the sky with the echoes of her breathless unrestrained laughter as she galloped away bareback.

It was the hardest act William had ever challenged himself to perform, but he succeeded to maintain a secret with Peggy Bell while at the same time holding one with Erminia, who was the only one who knew that it had been _his_ desire to have Peggy visit for tea and for what bashful purpose.

They sat at the piano together, he and his adopted sister, playing the only song his hands knew and laughing every time he missed a note. “Pay attention, Miss Bell,” William said, reverting to formalities in order to show his ability to keep all said in the hills a secret, “Erminia will put you through your paces next.”

“But I cannot play. I have never had a lesson,” the girl insisted.

“Oh go on,” Father said, “This piano expects rough treatment. These two have been tormenting it for years.”

“Take a leaf from William’s book. Learn a single tune, and provided you vary your tempo, you may trot it out at every social gathering, wringing tears or smiles from your audience in turn.” With that the song finished and William pressed one last final key, a low resonating note, and beamed like a boy who just accomplished his first solo concert.

“Oh, bravo!” Father praised the young people with clapping hands. “When I was a young man I only knew one song. _Barbara Allen_.” His son and his ward traded a weary look of resignation as just then Mr. Buxton started in on singing without accompaniment. “ _In Scarlet town where I was born there lived a fair maid dwelling_!”

William cringed inwardly at his father’s display, but Peggy laughed, and he did too a little.

“Oh, I sang so fearfully badly nobody ever requested an encore.”

“Come along Peggy,” Erminia said, ramming her sharp hip into his to scoot William from the bench. Peggy sat down and Erminia demonstrated a progression of notes which Peggy repeated with apparent ease.

Erminia glowed at her and exclaimed to the others, “perfection! You have a rival Billy Boy. She will be playing before all Cranford by this Christmas.”

“Perhaps you could teach her _Barbara Allen_. Then we might perform a duet.” Father said. William moved over to hold his father’s shoulder, slightly embarrassed but loving the man all the more for talking so sweetly to Peggy.

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Mr. Buxton excused himself after tea, and Peggy waited until they were certainly the only ones in this side of the house before speaking directly to William, “I want to tell you now.”

He sat straighter at once and glanced at Erminia, who looked between Peggy’s quietly resigned posture and William’s excited one, her eyebrows raised. “What is this?”

“It is a secret,” Peggy said importantly, fighting a grin. “One I promised to tell him if he did not pester me with it, and he has not. I thought to keep it from you at first, Erminia, but I can see now that it would be wrong to do so. You are capable of the same firm friendship that Billy is and so I know that I can trust my secret with you as well. I want to. I shan’t like to play favorites with my only two friends.”

“Billy, now, is it?” Erminia asked, giving William a significant look. He looked calmly back at the dark haired woman, unashamed of his nickname and those he granted permission to use it.

“He has told me his secrets,” Peggy said. “He hates the name William, and so to me, he shall be Billy. In return, I have a secret that I will now confess. It too, is regarding my name to a degree. The rest is a matter of higher things. I have given Billy great hints about it, and he cannot guess it. Indeed, no one will, or so I hope.”

“How intriguing,” Erminia said with a dimpled smile. “Pray, continue. I must hear more of this.”

“Do not be jealous of our confidential trades,” Peggy insisted to the girl William spoke most of, “It only came up in conversation during the ride, when I decided that I should like to make you _both_ my truest of friends. To do so I cannot keep my tongue silent on this matter any longer.”

“She promises if it were to get out it would be ruination,” William shared. Peggy realized belatedly that he was disappointed in having to divulge his ignorance on the matter. She could easily imagine the arrogance he would have possessed at having had the shocking information first, and his pride made her smirk as he continued in a half-playful accusation, “She would not utter a word past that, insisting that I needed to be seated securely and in a place where we might discuss it at great length. Can this secret hold any more power over the imagination, Erminia?”

“It cannot. Speak, Peggy Bell. Whatever can this mystery cover?”

“I was first named Gregory,” she blurted. Erminia blinked. William’s eyebrows swooped low and he leaned forward in absolute question.

Peggy rushed on to fill the silence, “I am not entirely as I appear--Though a good deal of the mannerisms I possess come rather naturally--I strive for more femininity than was graced me on my birth. My voice, for example, is capable of dropping unseemly low. I ply a razor finer than my brother’s and use bees wax to further smooth the skin. My bodice is stuffed with folds of linen, and my skirt conceals the rest.”

The little speech she had practiced ten times already in her head felt rushed and unintelligible as it tumbled out of her. It only became worse when the words stopped and total silence fell in its wake. Her heart thrummed at the speed of a running horse, and her breathes made her light headed. She could hardly believe she had actually uttered the words.

William blinked more than once. Erminia let loose a gasp that sounded like a laugh.

Peggy flinched at the sound and bit her lip, unsure of the elegant woman’s meaning. Erminia was quick to reassure, “Forgive me, only I find myself trampled with a good deal of new information--Billy?” she asked in alarm.

William had risen to his feet and was leaving.

“Billy, sit down,” Erminia ordered, but he did not listen. He reached the door. Peggy’s heart lurched as if to follow, and her sudden shift in the chair moved it an inch across the floor. The stutter of wooden legs on the rug made him turn violently, and even Erminia gasped.

“Is this a joke?” he asked. His voice was quite low. Entirely serious. Peggy gulped, uncomfortable in such a searing gaze. When it was clear that she could not talk for fear, Erminia huffed.

“My dear Peggy, you are suggesting that you are--a _man_?”

Breaking free of William’s intense stare, Peggy found that Erminia was smiling as if the topic of discussion was no more out of place than the latest fashions in London. Slowly, her petrified heart began to move again. The sensation of life after The Revelation felt strange in her chest, something was burning up her throat.

She swallowed and nodded. “Only in body,” she answered glumly. “Knowing the truth, puzzling aspects of my appearance must seem clearer to you now. My jaw line. The tenor in my voice.”

“Those are not puzzling aspects!” Erminia cried, still seeming to be in shock, “I shouldn’t have suspected a thing had you not confided in me. I have met with one like you before and knew it straight away, but you are nothing like him. Or I should say _her_.”

Peggy looked up at her, bewildered, and her voice was small, “Another like me?”

“Paris is full of wonders,” the young woman promised. “Tis my favorite city in the world for it. Have you been suffering in this little old town with no idea that you are not alone in your….inclinations?”

“Well—yes,” Peggy said, gasping. Her cheeks were somehow wet. She dashed away the drops.

Erminia was out of her chair and at her side, a comforting hand on her arm. “Oh, you precious thing. If it were not for these tears, I would still not believe you. You even cry as prettily as a she.”

The light touch and the words comforted Peggy like only her father’s embrace used to do. The young lady produced a handkerchief, looking Peggy head to toe and back, “You make a very pretty girl and there isn’t a suspicious thing about you. I applaud your talents, as would all of the French.”

Blushing, Peggy shook her head, sniffing lightly, “They are not talents. Only tricks.”

“Tricks are talents or a magician should never make any money.”

Peggy laughed, which was the last thing she expected to do today upon deciding she would reveal her gender. Erminia laughed, too, as warmly accepting as Peggy could have ever hoped. But William was quiet. He hadn’t said a word or even moved since turning to look at her. Peggy’s good feeling on the matter dissolved quickly upon seeing his distress.

Erminia noted it the same time Peggy did and so adopted a more business like air and asked, seemingly for his benefit, “Perhaps you had better try your hand at explaining _why_ you do it? I confess to curiosity on the matter, myself, for I had little opportunity to speak to the Parisian.”

“Well…” Peggy twisted the handkerchief in her hands, eyes dried now. “I was never comfortable as a boy. At thirteen my happiness was so dependent on being allowed to dress and behave as a girl that my father rechristened me Peggy and moved the family here, so that I may live the life my heart longs for.”

Silently, William began to do laps around the room. Peggy forced herself to speak slowly so as to avoid another great rush of words like the first time. “I was never happy when I was known as Master Bell. When I first came here and was finally freed of the expectations laid down to me by my physical sex I thought that I would never tell a soul. But I know now that as much as I dislike the idea of being scorned as I was in Scotland, I do not want to live the rest of my life as I have since losing my father, friendless and alone. Yet true friendship requires that I be true to myself when I am with the people who I wish to be close to. That is why I tell you this now,” she said to William’s profile. “I _am_ a woman. But I was not given a woman’s body.”

William breathed out and looked away, instantly looked back and his scrutinizing eye seemed to have at last found Gregory hidden behind the guise. Peggy shivered and swallowed a slight rush of bile in her mouth. She did not want to be seen like that. Her arms twitched to cover her face.

He looked away.

“I do believe he is in shock, still. We must allow him a chance to get his head back on straight. Pay him no mind. I for one am honored to be trusted with this secret, Peggy Bell and I swear to you that I will uphold it or die fighting to keep it.”

A rush of gratitude so potent it stole her breath made Peggy’s eyes water again. “Thank you, Erminia. You are truly kind.”

The clock struck the hour, startling William out of his daze. A moment later, Mr. Buxton stepped into the room. “I am afraid your mother is expecting you home, Miss Bell. We shall have to leave it here for the day.”

Erminia was quick to her feet, so graceful it was soundless. “Yes. We shall continue tomorrow at the same hour if you can be spared.”

Her easy attitude and prompt manners had neatly concealed the delicate nature of the conversation, and Mr. Buxton had no idea that he had so narrowly missed a scene. Peggy stood, still feeling a trifle light-headed, and gathered her bonnet and cloak.

“I would prefer to walk back,” she said to Mr. Buxton. William turned from the window suddenly “It is going to rain. We cannot allow it.”

Erminia’s lips twitched but she tamed a happy smile and shot her guest a discreet look of relief. Peggy’s fingers shook slightly as she pinned her bonnet, and she could not hold back a laugh. “I care not to suffer that side saddle again, and a little rain does not frighten me.”

“Then we order the carriage. I am in need of a visit to the shops anyway,” Erminia compromised. “Might we have the carriage, uncle?”

“You may. But you must get this girl home quickly or her mother will never let her out again.”

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While Erminia took Peggy home in the carriage, William struck out for the longest of his favorite walks. Since arriving back in Cranford, he’d only been on this course once before--he’d taken it to stretch his legs after the long ride from the sea. With no real path to lead the way, the walk would take him on a great wide circle around his father’s property, offering many splendid views of Cranford as it brought him nearly into town, then up the big hill, around the edge of a stand of trees, through a pasture and over a stream.

Napoleon bounded along beside his master’s wide, striding steps, his springy little legs often vaulting him over the height of the overgrown grass as he nipped at insects flying over his head. The expansive sights of the landscape and the little dog’s antics would have brought a fond smile to William’s lips on any other day, but today he was too distracted to see much of the sights or his dog’s lovable nature.

_I was first named Gregory_.

Hearing the whole of Peggy Bell’s extraordinary secret had left William feeling struck like a gong, a resounding blow which rendered all his thoughts into nothing but a blank white thrumming incoherency. A _man_ ; she was _a man_.

The prettiest, sweetest girl-- was not a _girl_ at all.

A part of William continued to rebel against the idea--refusing to _accept_ , refusing to _allow_ the mysterious Peggy Bell to be so mortal, so sinful, so impossible. This was the same part of the young man which had smiled the whole way home after speaking with her about the merits of children. This was the part which had eagerly begun courting her, the beguiling Miss Bell.

No, not _Miss_ Bell--Mister.

Mr. Gregory Bell.

The thought was at once abhorrent and… _intriguing_.

William walked.

Napleon yapped and played.

William sighed.

What put a dull ache in his stomach was the way everything which had been so peculiar and inexplicable about her before was now, with the light of new information, understandable.

Of course her voice would hold a surprising pitch. Of course her eyes held secrets.

Of course, though quiet and calm, she was still a creature _far_ from the meek. (She could not afford to be eager and thus draw attention to herself, yet everyday she boldly dared to change something as fundamental as the gender which God had selected for her-- _him_. The courage to do such a thing had to be astronomical.)

One question repeated through William’s thoughts, one desperate plea. How could this be? _How_?

He had not been this disturbed or befuddled in the whole of his life. He felt like someone had taken the ground up by the edges of the horizon and _shook it_ like one would a rug out the backdoor, flinging all to the wind. All that he had thought he had known seemed to be, now, nothing but a sham.

He had _liked_ Peggy Bell.

Oh, to hell with the charade, he liked her still. Regardless of what was beneath her skirt, she was sincere and gentle and…. and… beautiful.

And there lay the reason William walked with his eyes on the ground, his mouth in a tight straight line.

What did it mean? Was he like those fellows from school, the two “firm friends” whom everyone knew shared a bed as often as not? (William had been shocked to learn about Stark and Rogers in his first year at school, but never so surprised as he was to find them to be amiable, intelligent, and worthwhile men.) True, he’d learned to accept their choices and become good friends with them… but that did not make him one of them. He’d never been _inclined_ … he’d never even _considered_ it.

Yet Peggy Bell had captured his immediate attention--and she had been a _man_ , even then.

_Erminia_ , he’d said to the elegant young lady that morning, mere hours ago when the world had seemed a simple place. _Invite Peggy Bell to tea. Make her a friend of yours._ And when his father’s ward had drily questioned this direct order of his, he had explained, _I wish to see more of her, but do not want to overwhelm her by seeking her company for myself. I believe she would be much more comfortable receiving my attentions if she believed she was here first and foremost as your friend rather than as the girl I am courting._

His raven haired sister had smirked at him. _Does Uncle know your intentions with her?_ He’d shaken his head no and she had patted his cheek with a melodious laugh, _Oh,_ _Billy-Boy, anyone you wish to pursue is_ required _to be a friend of mine, for the poor girl will need constant support to ensure your numerous faults do not frighten her away._

It was enough to make William dread facing Erminia, who--with thanks to that conversation--knew the interest he’d had in Peggy. _If only_ , his pride ached with bitter regret, _if only I hadn’t let my intentions be known, I could deny everything and be… less the fool._

By the end of the long walk, the clouded sky had darkened considerably and the wind had picked up, pushing against his shoulders and lifting the tails of his coat. The long promised rain was soon to come at last. William’s legs burned from his brisk uphill marching, his face was no doubt flush with the exercise and his heart felt strong and sure as it pounded in his chest, but the turmoil of the revelation was no more settled. He hoped to go straight to his room, stay out of sight of everyone (especially Erminia) for as long as possible.

Of course, he was not so fortunate.

Erminina cut him off upstairs, partway to his room. Her mouth was a serious line, her eyes burning with both question and amusement, “I thought you’d be here when I returned. You’ve been out long.”

“Napoleon was enjoying the walk, I decided to take him the long way around,” William replied, pleased by how natural and unbothered he sounded. When he made to go around Erminia, however, she side stepped into his path.

“Don’t you want to know what she said about you in the carriage home?”

William could not stop the questioning cut of his eyes to Erminia’s, the slice through his chest at the thought that he had been discussed. He saw the whole scene in vivid detail. Attempting to apologize for his rude behavior, Erminia would have told Peggy that this whole afternoon had been his bumbling attempts to court her and that his attitude after the revelation would have been nothing but a man nursing a wounded pride. They had probably laughed at him. William the Fool.

Erminia’s lips quirked in one corner, “I didn’t tell her your intentions.” This instantly eased him. “And it’s just as well that I did not, for it would have distressed her greatly. Poor thing was distraught with the idea that she would lose our friendship over this. She told me in no uncertain terms that she only revealed the secret to ensure that no one is made the fool in the course of our relationship.”

“Hmm,” was all the reply William had at hand. He tried again to get around the stubborn young woman, but she gracefully kept herself directly in front of him.

“Promise me you will see her tomorrow and ensure her that your silence today has been nothing but shock and that your friendship remains true.”

William dropped his head back, not at all willing to promise what he could not guarantee. Erminia’s lips pursed and she was so like her mother, his Aunt, the way her eyebrows went up and her eyes seemed to demand he be the gentleman he was expected to be. “William, she was _crying_ over the idea of having destroyed what she called her only chance at friendship. You know all she has is that tiresome brother and prudish mother. I fear she is greatly unhappy with her lot in life.”

“Perhaps if he didn’t wear dresses then his lot in life would--“

Erminia slapped him.

William’s line of sight was forced into an abrupt direction shift to the left, skin on his cheek burning with a flashing rush of blood, the flesh and bone underneath feeling as if it had exploded under the force; Erminia did not give him time to recover before her reprimand began, “Peggy _told you_ how important it is that she never hear herself referred to as _he_ again, and yet you would make a speech like that? Shame on you!”

“But--“

“You will speak only when I am finished, William Buxton,” Erminia cut in, fiery but keeping her voice low, “I am appalled that you would let your pride hurt that dear creature. She cannot help what she is and she, like all of us, deserves her happiness which, humbly, is only contingent on _friendship_! Mere friendship! She is not asking for education or riches or love, just a companion or two with which to converse! Yet _you_ would cast her off as some kind of untouchable, unlovable freak? That is unchristian of you and your mother would be ashamed.”

William, whose spine had straightened under the force of the reprimand being laid so heavily upon him, and whose jaw had tightened under the lingering pain of the slap, only barely managed to keep from shouting, “You do not know what my mother would think of this!”

“I know she would not be happy with you hurting someone who never consciously did anything against you beyond being so likable that you found yourself enjoying her company.”

“I am not hurting her!” William snapped, “I have done nothing against her!”

“If you abandon her now, you will be hurting her. I fear she would not even accept my friendship if you scorned her--she would be afraid to come to this house with the thought of running into you. We are in this together, William. She needs us _both_.”

His pride yielded and William sagged a little, the anger leaving his voice as he asked his oldest friend, “But it is so strange, Erminia! How can you be so firmly on her side in all of this? How do you seem to _accept_ it so easily?”

Erminia’s chin rose with pride and a wide smile, “I cannot say. Perhaps I am only a modern individual with a truly Christian heart of forgiveness and understanding. But most likely it is because I have lost my parents to a violent mugging, and so I can attest to the fact that there _is_ far greater sin in the world than a sweet boy in a dress who only wants a friend.” 

William fell silent, half mourning the memory of Mr. and Mrs. White, his aunt and uncle, who had been so abruptly and cruelly taken from the world, and half pondering Stark and Rogers from school, who had certain smiles and looks just for each other and how he, William, had often witnessed them sitting in corners and talking for hours. He had the distinct memory of watching them and thinking that they could not be as wicked as the holy book insisted they were.

_And Peggy isn’t even asking you to share her bed,_ a little part of William’s mind said, _she just wants your acceptance; no more or less than the boys at Eton._

“I shall call on her tomorrow,” William promised and the instant relaxing of Erminia’s attitude fortified his resolve on the matter. He met her eye, smiling, “I will show her that she made no mistake confiding in the both of us, and that she will always have our support.”

Erminia moved forward and pressed a kiss to the same skin which still stung from the flat of her hand, “Thank you, William.”

“Hmm,” William’s eyes dropped to the floor as he finally managed to sweep past her and into his room.

Even having resolved to do it, he squirmed a little on the inside at the thought of seeing Peggy Bell again and behaving then as if her secret did not matter.

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Sleep did not come easily for either party.

Peggy tossed and turned all night, alternating between certainty that William and Erminia would keep her secret and fear that she had made a massive mistake that could not be undone with anything short of another great migration across the map. She cried in sorrow that her life should be so treacherously complicated and then she talked to God and the memory of her Father and then she cried a little more. When she slept, tear tracks were still wet on her face.

William did not even try to go to bed until the small hours. He stayed up, pacing the rug, and analyzing his feelings, half afraid of what he would unearth within himself. While he knew that being different was not as sinful as others would have it believed, he also could not deny the endless trouble it would be. The boys at Eton proved that: Stark and Rogers had always maintained a stringent privacy yet still suffered regular torment for their love.

It was near dawn when he concluded at long last, the plainest facts.

Peggy Bell had caught his attention with her boldness. She was kind and smart as a whip and bashful, all endearing traits. But had he ever, _truly_ , been sexually attracted to her? He thought not. There were plenty of fetching girls that had haunted him in that fashion, and there had been no time for Peggy to make the list. At least, not that he could recall in all honesty. He could only recall wanting to see more of her; wanting to talk more and further understand that puzzlingly, sweet mind…

Therefore, William’s conclusion was that his interest in her had been purely friendship, deep and abiding right from the beginning, true, but _friendship_ nonetheless.

In bed at last, William fell to sleep at once, but it was not restful. Unnerved by the way she had tricked him so easily, he was visited by a nightmare wherein every beautiful woman in the world was actually a man, a secret held by all and kept from him until his wedding night, when his innocent wife shed her skirt to reveal—

Gasping in terror, William bolted upright in bed to find that it was full morning, and Napoleon needed out of the room. The dog sat at the door, whining slightly, clawing at the wood. He had not meant to trap the canine inside for all of the night, and climbed instantly out of the sweat-drenched sheets to free him.

His skin prickled with the cold, his heart still hammering in his chest. His ears were ringing and his fingers shook as the nightmare clung to him. He could scarcely take comfort in the fact that it had been a mere dream, for it was not entirely fancy. Peggy was a man, and there were others in the world like her…

And just like that, leaning on the wash basin and trembling in his cold nightshirt, William found the first ray of reason. _There were others like Peggy Bell_ , which if anything, proved that it was not done out of spite to torment the Good like William’s nightmare had made it seem.

Some unfortunate souls, like his own mother, could not help it if their body was weak and undependable. The illness was there from birth and not something fixed with medicines. Could it be that simple, that heartbreaking? Could it be that a mistake in _the blue-prints_ could turn a woman’s body into a man’s?

William dressed as he pondered, and then pondered some more as he shaved, imagining with bizarre clarity Peggy Bell performing this very task at perhaps this very moment--but unlike William, it was not a ritual of pride, she did not stop to consider each time keeping the mustache. Perhaps to her, every hair was a gross reminder of her imperfection, her curse, her illness….

He had slept so late that a quick breakfast made it time to set off to fetch Erminia’s newest companion.


	5. Chapter 5

This time when William showed up to fetch her for tea, he was on foot. Peggy silently thanked God that he had come after all and that she had found the strength to make herself beautiful this morning, even though a great part of her had insisted that it was a waste of beeswax if no one was going to call.

Though her night had been shortened, she had risen early and completed her ritual of beauty and then all of her chores nonetheless, so that Mother could have no excuses for keeping her at home just in case. The sight of William knocking on the door stole her breath and squeezed her heart. She still had friends.

“What is he doing back?” Mother hissed when Peggy flew down the stairs to answer the knock. She had not told her mother that there would be another tea, just in case they had changed their mind. Now she explained, “Yes, Erminia has ordered dresses from Paris and promised to show them to me when they arrived. Can I go, Mother?”

The older woman’s breath of exasperation changed Peggy’s mind, and she was no longer asking. “I have to go, Mother. He is knocking. Let me answer it.”

She pulled open the door. William’s chest expanded when he saw her, and then he smiled politely. “Good day. I believe I am earlier than you expected me. But I took the journey on foot and so set out early to avoid us being late back.”

“I enjoy walking,” Peggy said instantly. “And I have completed my chores already so there is no trouble.”

From inside his jacket, William presented a thin, hard cover bound book to Mother. “My father’s favorite Classic. He wonders about Edward’s thoughts on it.”

Mother accepted the book with a pained, gracious smile and closed the door on William’s bow. Peggy led him away from the house in brisk strides, but his long legs allowed him to keep up with ease. They said nothing until the cottage was out of sight.

Peggy had decided to let William speak first.

At length, he cleared his throat. “How are you today, Miss Bell?”

She remembered that he had agreed to call her Peggy from now on, but did not correct him. She had to allow that there would be a change between them now that he knew the truth. If this was the extent of it, she would be very happy.

“I am well, thank you, but it is not I who should be troubled. You have had a very great shock and I fear you are now angry with me.”

Wordlessly, he shook his head. They walked in silence, listening to the wind and the birds. Peggy breathed easier at the assurance that he was not upset, but his unusual somberness was off putting. He seemed less like the sun now, something closer to the thoroughly abused orange, misshapen and left rotting on a table.

“I beg you, ask me anything,” she insisted, “Or tell me what is on your mind. I promise you I have heard all of it. Or at least I think I have. You cannot alarm me, and I would prefer a debate to this painful silence.”

He breathed easier, a hard sound through his nose that signaled resolve. “I assume that you have kept it from them that your secret is out,” he indicated the path behind them, her family. “They know not that I know.”

“That is correct. It is for their own good as well as mine. Ever since my transformation, they do not care to be reminded that I am not what I appear, of what we escaped in Scotland. To know that I have revealed myself here in the safety of Cranford will surely set them frantic. As it is, every little mistake I make inside my own home is to them the pebble that will bring down the mountain.”

“They worry for your safety, as anyone would. It is a dangerous thing you do, Miss Bell.”

“I know it. But please do not think I reveal this secret on whims. You and Erminia are the only people in the whole world I have granted the knowledge. All who I left behind in Scotland were vicious to a miserable boy called Gregory, whom they have been made to believe is dead. My life has been happy here in Cranford, though quiet and a little lonely without my father and our long talks…”

“I take it that these talks you speak of—he was a minister was he not? You must have been discussing your… preferences and God’s word on the matter.”

She smiled ruefully, “That was usually the course our discussion took. My father was of a mind that I am only unconventional and not at all a wicked or sinful creature. He abdicated that I may do what makes me happy so long as I hold to decorum and purity.” She smirked.

William laughed and looked away. “Forgive me, but I still find it very strange. Is it not like an illness?”

“I am not mad,” she insisted with a hard voice, sharp like a dagger. William was quick to clarify, “No! I do not mean of the mind, but of the body—such as my mother or Lady Ludlow, defects from birth only not life threatening.”

“I do believe it is, yes. It is difficult to explain, but I have always known I was a girl. I liked things made for girls from the time I was quite small. I would see mother brushing her hair and I would babble at her that I couldn’t wait to be grown up and have hair as beautiful and long as hers. As I grew older and I saw other girls in our village learn to sit and behave proper and wear pretty dresses, I loathed that my mother and brother reprimanded me if I moved or sat or walked too like the other girls. And I longed to have skirts rustling about my legs. I first tried one on when I was nine. I fell instantly in love. I had never felt so… secure. After that it began to wear on me when I had to answer to Gregory. When I had to be known as he. When I could not learn to sew. When I was made to start learning the lead in dances. And when I was eleven and they began to prepare to send me off to school I became so distraught I stopped eating.”

“Dear Lord.”

“Father endeavored to teach me at home, and he saw me back to health. And it is because I was open and honest with him that he began to understand me. He let me wear what I wanted to wear, and speak and move as I wanted to move. By the time I was thirteen, he had decided I was his daughter, Peggy. He sat Mother and Edward down, and he told them in no uncertain terms that there was to be no more of Gregory. He insisted that the Bell family never had two sons, but rather a son and then a daughter in disguise.” She chuckled, “he had a fondness for referring to me in that way. And it did not bother me. Not like Gregory or being called he.”

“He sounds like an extraordinary man.”

“He taught me to love and trust God despite it all. I think our discussions on the matter were just as much to help him find the answers as they were for me. And I am thankful he allowed for adjustment in thought. I know that when he died, he was at peace with it and with God.”

“I wish I could have known him. I should like to participate in one of your discussions. There is a great deal going in circles in my mind. So many questions.”

“As a devoted friend, I am at your service, Billy. What would you have us talk about first?”

He sighed heavily and looked away. “What Erminia says—about there being others like you… How many others suffer from this medical issue, do you think?”

“I do not know. It is certainly not a very common thing. I am the only one in Cranford, to be sure… possibly all of England… but who can guess at the secrets in a city?”

“There are certainly men who love other men,” William said. “I am unsure if it is classified as a medical dilemma. I have met the like at school, as has Erminia with women who love other women. It is a thing that happens, we must accept.”

“Then why not a woman in a man’s body or a man in a woman’s?”

“A man in a _woman’s_ body? Forgive me, but what a queer idea. I can scarcely get my head around the notion of _you_ without trying to imagine it the other way around…goodness, it all seems like a mishap when put that way, does it not? Forget the idea of illness, it is a clerical error in the Before Life. Two souls intended for appropriate bodies were somehow, for whatever reason or accident, switched.”

They chuckled and walked several paces with smiles on their lips. Then Peggy looked at her shoes. “I no longer believe it was an accident,” she admitted. “But to what purpose, I scarcely know.”

“It has served me to open my eyes. Perhaps God intends you to keep us all on our toes so that we do not sit back and let the world turn on without change, without a thought to how it _could be_. Or should be. The pure of heart like you should never be kept imprisoned by conventionality.”

“Nor should the noble hearted be denied a chance to lend their lives to the future and all its promise.”

William accepted this graceful compliment silently, but the light that flashed in his eyes was something she wanted to set loose. She prompted him to speak on the subject that enlivened him so, “Why does engineering interest you?”

The topic change felt like a step out of cold shadows into the light. They could be Miss Bell and Mr. William again, without all this secretive talk. He inhaled deeply as he gathered a suitable answer, then, “It is bold and new—it is progress, an advancement of the human achievement.”

She could barely suppress a giggle. “You are very passionate, aren’t you?”

He blushed slightly and the space between them on the path widened. “Yes. But my eagerness is in account of how long I have impatiently waited for an opportunity like the railway. Finally I—I can belong to something bigger than myself.”

She gazed curiously at him and tilted her head, “But you have always belonged to something bigger, Billy.”

He frowned down at her in question.

“God,” she said, “You needn’t look outward, as all mankind tends to do. Only look inside and there it all is. God is in our hearts.”

He gave a rueful smile, allowing that she was a minister’s child. “I grant you that, Peggy, but you must allow God to be more than me and so what, then is He? What form should I then devote myself to? The ocean? It is, believe me, bewildering, calming, and intimidating….but it is also untouchable. Or at least, uncaring of mankind. We are apart from it, and so cannot vow our lives to it. We cannot, through the ocean, do God’s work. What else, then, is there?”

“Love thy neighbor,” Peggy said. “The answer to your conundrum is in the first two commandments. Love God, and—because God needs a form in which to be loved—others.”

He watched the ground he trampled in his boots, and the corners of his mouth quirked. He looked sideways down at her. “And He meant all others. That is why you shall always have mine and Erminia’s friendship even if the unthinkable should happen and you are found out. We will stand against the scorn with you.”

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Mr. Buxton wished to share the contents of a long letter with William the moment he was back in the house. Peggy was directed to Erminia, and so parted ways with her first friend in search of her second. The beautiful woman was seated at a writing desk but put down her quill at the sight of Peggy to stand and extend her arms.

“How are you, gentle soul?”

Peggy laughed, breathless and allowed the embrace, attempted to return it. She was not hugged often, and found it alarming to have her stuffed bodice tested against that of a real one. As was the kisses Erminia pressed to her cheek. When they parted, Peggy nervously smoothed the front of her dress as if it had been ruffled by the brief greeting, but did not want to touch her face, least her beeswax be further disturbed.

“Billy has been detained by an important letter.”

Erminia pulled a face. “It is not so very important, only uncle thinks so. I am without doubt we will hear all about it upon Billy’s return to the room. Until then, let us talk of pleasant things. What would you like to do today?”

“You will let me decide?”

“Yes, of course. You are the guest and we have invited you here to free you from the boredom of your daily dwelling. Pray, we shall discuss whatever you wish or partake in crafts of your choosing.”

“Is that what fine accomplished ladies do? I have often wondered. But I am not one for crafts. I never have the time after chores.”

“I find that most of my time is spent writing letters. It is what happens when you have made the majority of your friends in Brussels when your address is in England. I recall that you relished in talk of what I might buy in the shop the other day. Might I show you my purchases and receive your judgment on them?”

“Oh yes!”

Erminia led the way out of the drawing room. At the staircase, they ran into William who was on the way to them. His evident annoyance from his father was washed away by his surprise to find them secreting away together. “Where are you going? I only just freed myself for the visit.”

“We are going to play with and admire my dresses. You are welcome to come if you wish.”

Peggy did not think Erminia meant it as a serious invitation, for when William paused and then changed course to follow, the dark haired beauty lifted her eyebrows at Peggy with a bemused smile.

The bedroom was large and far more richly decorated than Peggy’s own. The mirror was gilded in silver, and the bed had a canopy and curtains. William was the last inside and left the door open, seated himself without ceremony on the window seat. Napoleon was only minutes in discovering that his master was upstairs and was panting at William’s ankle before Peggy found the nerve to seat herself on the edge of the bed, for there was no other place to sit.

Erminia, not even blinking at Peggy for messing up the neatly made covers, threw open her wardrobe to reveal so many dresses they hardly fit. Peggy gasped and was on her feet again as Erminia pulled out a lace so delicate it looked as if it would fall to pieces in her hands.

“How beautiful!”

“It is from Paris,” Erminia informed. William’s voice cut into their pleased giggles of rapture over the pretty garment.

“What is it about clothes that girls like so much?”

“Ignore him, he is only jealous that his woes are not the center of our attention.” Erminia said.

William dropped his head back on the glass of the window loudly. Peggy realized that he was sulking and could not stop herself, “Please do not tell me that you are as prone to pouting as my brother.”

This instantly corrected William’s posture. “I am not pouting. I am only confounded by the power of fashion. It is only clothes. Why do women make it such an ordeal?”

“You cannot deny that there are some men with vanity to match a woman’s,” Peggy said.

William’s smirk was too knowing and Peggy colored slightly when she realized her statement implemented her, to some degree. There was a beat of awkward silence, and the all three of them laughed lightly.

“It is not vanity that drives me to wear women’s clothes.”

“Then what is it?” the sincere question from William made Peggy forget about the lace, and she turned to pace a little as she devised an answer.

“I do not feel safe until I am in a dress. It is a ridiculous statement, I know. How can a dress offer protection when a woman is more vulnerable than a man? It is not something I can put easily into words. I have been trying these last six years. When I am in trousers, I feel naked. Every look and every word cuts into me like glass, and I cannot escape it. But when I am in a dress and bonnet, I am indestructible. I can weather any storm.”

William’s eyes fell to the dress still in Erminia’s hands, and his throat pulsed. “All of that out of lace and silk?”

“I told you it does not make sense in words. You would have to feel it yourself to comprehend it.”

“Oh, no thank you. I do not think I would be at all pretty in a dress, even one from Paris.”

Erminia and Peggy looked quickly at one another and burst into loud laughter. William scratched his dog’s ears, looking pleased with himself.

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William stood in the front row with his father, hymn book in hand, singing and yet not understanding a word of the song which came so mechanically out of him. He was grossly inattentive to the service today--in fact, he’d spent the whole of it peering pensively at the rector and idly wondering that should the man grow his hair out, wore clothes that tricked the line of sight, and adopted gentler mannerisms, if he would make a strikingly handsome woman.

The thought, initially absurd, had settled in his mind now so that he could see it plainly and thus fought a smirk. Several times he caught and silently chided himself. He did so with a mind that God could hear his thoughts and so his disrespectful imaginings and his self-reprimands would thus cancel each other out. It wouldn’t do to tally up the sins even while _in_ church.

Mingling in the grass after the conclusion of their worship, William stayed quieter than usual, surveying the gentlemen about him. He stripped away their beards, redressed their hair and clothes. More often than not the result was so jarringly incorrect that it was laughable.

“You’re in a cheerful mood this morning,” Erminia murmured to him. “Whatever could it be about?”

He shook his head, lips rolling between his teeth, refusing to share his nonsensical musings. Erminia narrowed her eyes at him, smirking, but let it go, granting him the right to secrets. William looked around for Peggy--half a mind to share at least the image of the rector which had so humored him--and he was disappointed to see the backs of the Bell family as they made their way up the lane, well out of shouting distance.

It did not surprise him to see them off so quickly. Mrs. Bell and her son were always, of course, eager to keep Peggy from mingling too much. The thought angered William. It was as if her family--who were commanded by God to love her more than anyone--were incapable of seeing that their _daughter in disguise_ , to steal a phrase from the late Mr. Bell, was a fine creature without a shred of suspicion about her; considered by all to be a perfectly respectable girl.

Surely letting her speak to others for a quarter of the hour or so after church wouldn’t be such a terrible risk to her secret!

Father was laughing boisterously at his elbow, Erminia had just proven her cleverness yet again, and this time to a substantial audience, but William had missed the comment looking at the retreating form of Peggy walking with her head down.

 _She’s so small,_ he thought with a wry grin, _and so gentle looking. How does she manage it, if she were_ truly _a man_? It did not seem possible. In fact, the larger part of William still rebelled against the idea whenever he could see her from a distance. The way she moved was that of a _girl_.

Partway to the house, William declared to his father and Erminia that he was enjoying the air and sun far too much to return indoors just yet and would walk about for a while. Father let him go in peace only after William had promised to call on the Charles family and fetch the books Sir Charles had promised to loan them for William’s political education.

It hurt William’s pride to agree to do such a thing, but then resisting this simple request would lead to shouting and discomfort for all. And it was only books, which he need not actually _read_. Nevertheless, he decided that he would have his walk (visit with the Bell family as were his true intentions), and only _then_ call on the Charles' if he had the time.

Tugging up tall grass, he idly tied it in a ring as he struck out for the Bell cottage, whistling happily.

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Peggy was surprised to see a figure ambling up the lane, and was delighted to recognize William Buxton’s golden curls even from this distance. She waited until she was nearer before calling out to him. He lifted a hand coming to a stop, “Miss Bell, how are you today?”

“Well, and yourself?”

“I’m on my way to call at your house, but if you don’t mind, I won’t. You are, after all, the one I wanted to see.”

With a swoop in a her stomach and a nervous laugh, Peggy busied herself fetching the water as she was bid to do, “We are friends, of course I don’t mind. I am on my way to the spring for a fresh pail of water. Join me?”

“Yes. Thank you. I’m delighted to have met you before making the house. I wasn’t keen on conversing with your brother about accounting--with no disrespect!”

“Not at all. I understand that my brother is not to be enjoyed by all types.”

“I was saddened to see you gone so quickly after the service.”

Peggy sighed, “Edward slept fitfully and woke with a crick in his neck. He was adamant about returning home for a second try at some rest.”

“Hmm,” moving on from the topic of her selfish and overly-indulged brother, he asked, “May we speak more about--well, about what we’ve been discussing?”

“Go on, then, out with your questions,” she prompted, amused, turning them off the lane and over the crest of a hill, downwards towards the water.

Stomping along beside her down the incline of the hill, William hesitated and laughed at himself. “It is indelicate. Pray stop me if I tread too closely on your sensibilities. I am merely curious and am not the type to live without answers.”

On level ground again, the bridge underfoot, Peggy eyed him for a moment, ascertained that he was, at least, bashful and thus not likely to be the cad any such _bold_ inquires might suggest him to be. “You are free to ask me anything, Billy Buxton.”

Green eyes shifted to her and away. He swung his hands behind his back and walked a little straighter, maintaining more than the polite distance from her as he paced to the far end of the bridge, “Erminia was right--you do very well as a girl and shouldn’t have been easily discovered. Therefore, I have my question. Might your fragility be the cause of… stunting your development?”

Understanding forced Peggy to smile bashfully, “Are you asking me if I am I a eunuch?” Her bucket splashed into the water in punctuation to the question.

“I beg your forgiveness, but yes. I am.”

“You’ve made no offense that warrants my forgiveness. And to answer your question: no, I am not. I am…” she fished for a word as she lifted her bucket from the stream and settled uncomfortably with, “Whole,” saying it with a moue of disgust.

“But you are so far from a man--your skin, you’re voice. Is there, then, another way to stop the advancement of puberty? Perhaps a concoction of--“

“No!” she interrupted with more laughter, “I told you. I shave closely and practice the rest. When my voice wanted to drop I simply did not let it.”

 “That is easier said than done, I think.”

“It only required putting my mind to it.”

“What a mind you must have, then,” William mused aloud. He huffed, pacing behind her to the other end of the bridge to peer up at the hill’s crest, the two trees there. He retreated into thought.

Peggy silently marveled that both Erminia and William could so sincerely promise that she seemed so very much like a girl. She often felt that she wasn’t fooling anyone. Yet the gentleman stood there looking quite flummoxed by her petite form.

With water pail in hand, Peggy sighed happily, “There it is. I am sorry, but I cannot linger to answer more of your questions. They are accustomed to how long this should take me and will be worried if I am late.”

“Of course,” William sidestepped and motioned her past him on the bridge, “Thank you for your understanding, Peggy. And I apologize, again, for the indecency. My mind, you see, it just won’t stop until it has its answers.”

“I understand. You are a man, after all. Unlike Erminia, who understands being a woman, you must find my deliberate transformation to be most peculiar and difficult to grasp.”

“You can say that again,” William sighed with a weary roll of his eyes. They snapped to her once more, the water in her hands, “Shall I carry that for you?”

“Oh, no. I have it. And, anyway, you wouldn’t avoid Edward very well if you brought him his water would you?”

“I could carry it part of the way at least.”

“I manage well on my own. It is a little bucket.”

“Indeed it is.”

“Thank you for the kind offer to help a lady, Mr. Buxton,” Peggy curtsied, “It means more to me than it would any other girl. As I am sure you are aware.”

“You are welcome, Miss Bell.”

“Please call on me whenever you should wish it. I enjoy the conversation.”

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William had once or twice—or perhaps a few times, or more accurately about as often as he shaved--fallen asleep at night with pleasant scenarios playing through his mind: scenes from his future. Barely holding structure, no real beginning, never an end, these things had always featured private settings and a kind of boundless freedom to enjoy all of God’s creation. These were the kinds of situations were heaviness and heat in the groin did not need to be checked back into place. These were the kinds of situations wherein he could draw in a deep breath and imagine another warm body against his, another’s warm breath on his skin.

He never bothered to try to see her face clearly. His wife, he knew, would be made beautiful by their love.

While at school, in preparation for the fact that he would someday take a woman as his wife, he’d allowed some friends of his (blackguard types with money enough to part with in the sinful beds of whore houses) to set him in a booth in the public house with far too much to drink and tell him in shockingly plain terms all about the act itself and how it might be done successfully. He’d been greatly bewildered by the idea that the woman would enjoy it with the same raptures which men could know too easily just by taking themselves in hand.

Since that enlightening night at the pub, his little fantasies began to take the shape of his wedding night. He would lay his blushing bride back on the pillows and slowly teach her… everything. He liked to vary her reaction to his arousal. Sometimes she was bewildered and deeply intrigued, sometimes she had an eccentric aunt who had once prepared her the way his friends had prepared him and so she met his proud flesh with a gleam of _skill_ in her eye.

Sometimes she was intimidated and in these cases he would slowly let her acclimatize to it. Much like one might slowly learn to relax in the presence of a big horse, gaining the most confidence by reaching out a hand to lay on its nose, she would lay beside him, touch him, he would show her what to do, and even as he fought for control, _she_ would come to _him_ pressing closer and closer until they were one… and then always, without fail, he proceeded to take her with such skill and precision that he would watch her come undone even as he died within her.

Being dreams confined to the privacy of his own head, William held no shame in these rather arrogant imaginings.

The first time his wife looked like Peggy, he got all the way to the part where they’d gotten into the bed, her nightshirt was up so that her thighs were bare under his palms, and she was, as the fantasy usually went, to first meet with the hard ridge straining the fabric of his smalls and gasp, Oh!---before it hit him with force enough to open his eyes wide from a languid snooze.

 _She would know_.

Rattled, he shifted and then sat up, lifting his knees to keep the sheets from his arousal so that, without stimulation, it might recede.

He felt rather breathless and dazed and the idea would not stop repeating in his head. She would already know everything there is to know about it. The hardness, the heat, the texture, the dewy excretion, none of it would be new to her. She’ll have learned it all as he learned it. There would be no need for explanation whatsoever.

Even in the dream where his bride had a bold aunt, she still put forward _some_ questions, nothing as concrete as facts. Just the kinds of things a lover might want to know about him, personally. What does that feel like? Or this? What if I do that? What feels _best_?

Peggy Bell would have firsthand knowledge of how to handle it.

How had his mind conjured her face for such an ill-suited dream, and why? He climbed from the bed and paced in the dark, attempting to still his clattering heart and find air to breathe. The cool touch of the floorboards beneath his bare feet soothed him and helped clear his mind.

A twist of time, a mistake in memory. In his somnolent state, the facts had splintered, depositing him in that brief spell when he had been with all of Cranford fooled by her illusion. Thusly comforted, he returned to bed and found a sleep too deep for further dreams.

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	6. Chapter 6

The note from Miss Matty arrived with Edward’s latest book-keeping exercises. Peggy read the card addressed to her, inviting her to have tea with Miss Matty. Mother had no qualms in sending Peggy to the kind old woman’s home, for if Peggy could survive two trips to the Buxtons alone, then she could spend an idle hour entertaining a lonely old woman with no incidents. Once her chores were complete, Peggy set off for the heart of Cranford.

At Miss Matty’s house, Peggy stepped in the door to a surprising face, “Oh, good afternoon Bertha.”

Peggy had not seen this young woman since the night of Martha’s death, and she did not know if she was supposed to say anything about it or not. She did not want to bring up such a morbid topic. Thankfully, the maid spoke first, “Miss Pole’s lending me to Miss Matty, twelve to half gone three, six days a week and an hour on Sundays. Miss Matty says Miss Pole is being very generous.”

Indeed, she was, for Peggy knew Miss Matty to be as adept at keeping house as she. There was no need to make a servant clean two houses. Bertha stalked off towards the sitting room and Peggy followed. To her surprise, Miss Matty was not alone in the sitting room, nor was it Mr. Jynkins sitting with her.

The young lady was perhaps William’s age and possessed a doll’s face with plain coloring. She sat reading with a pair of spectacles on her nose and stood to greet Peggy with a smile. Miss Matty introduced her as Mary Smith, soon to be Mrs. Turnbull. Peggy was instantly envious of her romance, knowing not a single detail beyond the cut of the ring on her finger.

It was more than Peggy would ever have.

Shortly after their amiable introduction, Miss Smith led Peggy up to her room where dresses had already been laid out with bonnets and ribbons. The sight of them alone made Peggy happy, and she only believed that a session of dress up was in order. Then Miss Smith made her meaning clear.

“These are for you.”

Peggy stood breathless, gazing upon the many beautiful dresses that her stomach nearly hurt from the pull of it. She wanted them terribly, but her mother’s voice rang clear in her head, along with Edward’s. _You must refuse—tell her to give the donation to a charitable cause. You do not deserve these_.

But then, cutting into the echoing scorn, her stubborn side spoke up in a new voice, one very much like her new stubborn friend William Buxton _. You deserve to be happy, and is this not the single happiness they grant you? Dresses, to be worn every day._ Gulping and twisting her fingers together to stop them shaking, she managed a clear, pretty voice, “Miss Smith, do you truly not want these?”

“I have never cared much for clothes,” was the woman’s answer. “And now I’m engaged, I am to have a whole new _trousseau_.”

“They are too fine for me,” Peggy began, shaking her head, where Edward’s judging glare was beginning to silence all else.

“They are not fine. Only pretty. And you are a very pretty girl.”

Mary’s sincere words sounded very shocking to Peggy. Was she really pretty? She fought the urge to go to the looking-glass. Perhaps it was only the kind thing to say. Miss Smith had not, after all, said _beautiful_ ….

“Go on, dear, try this one,” Miss Matty insisted. Peggy relented, sweeping off her bonnet.

The dress was a muted pale, pleated blue in sturdy and comfortable fabric, a white lace collar, and it fit. Peggy smoothed a hand over the buttons and seams, fanning the skirt, unable to believe it actually fit! Feeling very fine, indeed, she stepped from behind the changing screen and saw herself for the first time in the glass. Her breath stopped. Her heart leapt. She felt rather like a princess and could not wait to tell her friends about this wonderful surprise, though she could predict how interested William would truly be over the topic of dresses. He would allow her to prattle, though, in return to her letting him do the same about the railway.

“My dear, you look quite delightful,” Miss Matty said, scooping up one of the new bonnets, “This trim is in a shade that would suit you. It will bring out the color in your eyes.”

Peggy fitted the hat, noticing the hue of her eyes for perhaps the first time in her life.

“Every young girl has her own most pleasing feature. Mrs. Forrester’s hair was the palest shade of gold, something like the petals of a jonquil. And Miss Pole had a figure that provoked no little comment.” Peggy eyed her reflection and lamented that she had no pleasing feature. Miss Matty did say, after all, that every young girl had one which was, sadly, not precisely the category Peggy belonged to. Not when it came to the finer details of physical aspects.

“What was yours?”

“I was told it was my complexion.”

A smile softened Peggy’s face as she imagined having such a pleasing trait—no more shaving, no more beeswax, just beautiful by nature alone. Alas, she would have to make do with not but her fetching eyes….though they did not seem anything special in the looking glass.

Turning from the inspection of her own face, Peggy’s eye fell on a silhouette of a gentleman with curly hair, “Who is that?”

“His name was Mr. Holbrook. I met him at a dance in the assembly rooms. They are closed down now.”

“And you did not marry?”

“Love without marriage is still a sacred thing. And unlike wedlock, it is not dissolved by death. Come now. Let us try you in the green.”

As she changed behind the screen, Peggy smiled to herself. _Love without marriage is still a sacred thing._ What a lovely, lovely thought. It seemed to imply that marriage was not necessary to please God. Peggy had always known she would never marry, and the idea that she may yet experience something worthwhile warmed her heart. Her mind went instantly to William, her handsome, kind, charming, intelligent friend.

She knew she loved him though she never thought about it so plainly as that nor dare say it in so many words. They could never marry. But, perhaps, loving him regardless of the obstacles, regardless of the distance that would never be crossed between them, perhaps that could be as right as marriage.

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The summer day beat down on everything and made walking anywhere as equally undesirable as staying indoors. True to this, William found Peggy just where Edward said she would be, sitting by the spring where the cool water played with the air and offered something of a reprieve. It was also, he easily imagined, a splendid reprieve from her family.

He noted a new dress on her and smiled. All the apprehension which had been plaguing him on the journey to her cottage fell away in that moment. (His recent dream had left him anxious at the thought of facing her. But now with her in sight, the comfort he had previously known in her presence returned to him swiftly.)

Her posture was one he had come to recognize, the one revealing that she was deep in thought. He wondered what might be on her mind. Was it something of little consequence—the dress? Identifying the birdsong in the air? Or was it something more like what she would have discussed with her father?

He hoped she would confide in him. He rather liked her honesty and straightforwardness. He wondered if it would be out of place to question her directly. When he’d achieved distance enough for it, he called to her.

“Miss Bell!”

Gasping, she stood and quickly grabbed her bonnet, fussed with her skirt. Something about it made William nearly sure her thoughts had been quite astray, maybe even into the indecent. The thought made him smirk as he made his way the rest of the way down to explain his presence, “Erminia sent me with the trap, to spare you the walk to the meeting at Johnson’s. Edward said I’d find you sitting by the spring.”

“It is my private place,” she said and quickly corrected, “It’s not _secret_. But neither he nor my mother ever come here.”

“This brook must run all the way to Missenden Moss. I suspect it feeds the swamp there.”

“Is it true that it’s the Moss that stops the railway’s way?”

“That and the barricade of old money,” William answered with bitterness.

“I suppose you mean the Hanbury estate.”

“Yes. I sometimes wonder what will become of England. When it is not confounded by geography, it’s imprisoned by its old ways.”

“Why should that be? There are people enough who wish to see things changed.”

“I count myself among them. But if I follow the path that my father laid down, it’ll be years before I’ll have the power to act. I may be more than _thirty_.  And by then I might be as hidebound as he.”

Her laugh was a sweet sound, shy even, “No, you won’t.”

Her certainty warmed something in William’s chest and he mused, “I wish I were so certain.”

“You have energy and education!” she fairly burst, “They are not gifts that spoil just because you are obliged to bide your time.”

The way she had of putting things so neatly into perspective cheered William out of his bitterness.  For the first time, he thought of his future--the one his father wanted him to have--with the consideration that he might manage to make something of it after all. “Come,” he told her, warmly, “Put on your bonnet and let us go.”

The nervousness with which she put it on confounded William. He’d begun to think of her as a creature of surety and sound opinion and boldness. But the fumbling in her fingers added something of a fresh, endearing quality about her. She glanced up at him and admitted, “It is new to me and the ribbons keep slipping in my fingers.”

“I think you should strive for a double knot first…” she followed his instructions deftly, “…and then draw the bow a little to one side…. That is _just_ how Erminia does it.” He thought to pay her a compliment by likening her to the finest woman in his acquaintance. He expected her to brighten like a candle wick to flame, as she usually did whenever he or Erminia paid her such compliments.

However, she only looked away with a rueful hum and then hurried on past him toward the trap. He recovered from his disappointment in stride and glanced out in the direction she had been looking. Perhaps whatever she’d been dwelling on had dampened her spirits so much as to take power from even the kindest of words.

Again, he hoped that, whatever it was, she would confide it in him.

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The springs in the seat of the trap gave under William’s weight as he settled next to Peggy and took up the reins. With a toss of them and a low call to the horse, he set them into motion. Uninterested in the same old view of the same old lane she walked every day, Peggy paid attention to how her escort handled the reins, having never had the opportunity to see it done from so close a vantage point.

It seemed simple enough. He merely gave a small tug this way or that if the horse seemed to want to veer of course and once or twice he threw the reins again to ensure the horse maintained speed.  She did not realize she had failed to disguise her interest until William handed the leather straps over to her, “Would you like to try your hand at it?”

She huffed, “I… I’ve never…”

“Tis easy. Look. He nearly drives himself,” indeed, the reins were slack and the horse pulled the trap on along the lane in steadfast duty.

It was a testimony to how drearily uneventful her life could get that taking control of a horse and trap put such a shock of excitement into her system.

The horse did, indeed, do perfectly well without a single bit of doing on her part, but then William put a gloved hand on hers, “Steady him, now, he’s want to go after the grass.”

She gave a tug with the hand he’d touched and the horse reset his course along the lane. Peggy sat straighter with pride, “This is not so difficult.”

“I knew straight away you would manage perfectly,” he said.

They rode in silence for a moment or two and then William suddenly asked, “May I inquire what had captured your thoughts as I came upon you at the spring? You looked most melancholy.”

“Oh,” she blushed, not meeting his eye, “It is silly.”

“Pray confide in a friend. Whatever brings you down so cannot be too silly.”

She sat straighter with a resolved sigh, “But it is nothing I can change. And I am at peace with it.”

“What is it?”

“My prospects,” she admitted, “As you well know. I can never marry and give children. When I dwell on it--which I do not often do--my spirits drop to the ground.”

“Oh, yes, I see,” he murmured, “How dreadful. I’m sorry I insisted you speak of it. It cannot be pleasant to do so.”

“Oh, but speaking of it is all I have,” she said. “If I cannot do it, then I can well imagine it and make do, can’t I?” Her smile was quite fetching, lighting up her eyes with whimsical fancy.

William was so pleased to see it he chuckled, “Ah, so you were creating the children you’d like to have in a perfect world? Daughters are your preference, I recall.”

She sighed, eyes focusing far off. William had mind to take the reins from her. She let them go without a fight, still seeing something other than the lane, “I haven’t settled yet on how many I would have, or if they should all be girls or not. I would adore having a little girl. To curl her hair and sew her dresses…”

“Do not give up hope yet, Peggy. You will be aunt to Edward’s children. And if you have nothing but nephews then you may yet find yourself a godmother to just such a little girl.”

“But who do I have to name me godmother of their child?”

“Erminia and I, of course,” William said with a great big smile, “Do not think we would forget you just because we are married. We are, I think, better friends than that.”

Peggy attempted to smile in happiness for her matched friends, but the expression was weak, for her musings at the stream were still too fresh in her mind to forget easily. She had been over indulgent and had envisioned herself as his wife in Erminia’s place.

William’s eyebrows moved with concern, and Peggy instantly pushed her sadness away by thinking of the good things. She was wearing a new, pretty dress, and about to spend the day in town—and anyway, neither William nor Erminia would be free to make friends indiscriminately if they were not already betrothed. She put her arm through his, “You are quite right, Mr. Buxton. How can I have overlooked you? I should enjoy preparing your daughters for society. They would have the most splendid golden ringlet curls!”

William laughed heartedly, “And God Bless any son of mine who inherits them. For they are a nightmare to maintain and in my opinion look rather ridiculous coming from under the brim of a hat!”

“No!” she cried at once, “I’m sure you are fetching in a hat.”

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Peggy had taken control of the trap again before they reached Johnson’s. She had thrown the reins a little too much and the horse was now moving at more of a spirited pace, so that when it came time to stop, she panicked. Shouting, but predominately laughing, William reacted with instinct. He took hold of her wrists and helped her halt the beast. They came to a jolting stop just past Johnson’s, laughing with all of Cranford looking at them.

“Sorry!” Peggy cried, loud enough for all to hear. The apology was accepted with fond shakes of townsfolk heads, whispers that the young were always fit to fly. Father would surely frown when he heard of this, but William was too pleased to care. Only Peggy Bell could make a ride into town an adventure. She had slumped into him upon the lurch when the trap stopped, and sagged into him with breathless laughter. It was most unexpectedly pleasant, stirring an odd bit of something in William. It was altogether something too lovely for one to be alarmed by its presence in the heart. He shouldn’t have noticed it any more than he would air in his lungs.

With a smile on his face so large he could not speak, he merely chortled and shook his head. Righting herself beside him, Peggy could not help laughing a little herself. “I only wanted to see how fast he could go.”

“I am well acquainted with how fast you ride,” he reminded her. “I am beginning to think nothing scares you.” He stepped to the ground and circled the horse only to find that Peggy had found foot holds on her own and had hopped off the vehicle with no assistance. She did not seem to notice her unlady-like behavior until she saw his face. Then she rolled her eyes as if to say even fine ladies did not need to be handed down all the time, and it was so like Erminia, he laughed again.

But as if to make up for it, she paused to let him open the door, and walked inside with her chin in the air. William scoffed and continued to laugh inwardly.

All of Cranford, it seemed, crowded the tiny shop. Both William and Peggy were hard pressed to find standing room. Father and Erminia were by the tea bins, and as politely as possible, they maneuvered that way but could not achieve it. Stopped at the display of candied sweets, Peggy turned to him, “Look at this pretty arrangement.”

He eyed the colorful array of treats. “Hmm. Is it the colors that capture your fancy?”

“I will not be ashamed that pretty things catch my eye like nothing else,” she insisted, pushing her elbow into his arm. “It is the color, but also the wonder. It all looks so delicious.”

Comprehension made his mouth fall open, “Have you never had candy?”

“I have not,” she answered with that far-away pensive look. William fished in his pocket for some shillings, “Would you like me to buy you a piece?”

“No, not unless you are buying some for yourself,” she insisted. He stopped his search for the funds and considered the multitude of sugary delights,

“I will forego the temptation today, if you don’t mind,” he confessed. “I had so many sweets when I first went off to school that I gave myself a toothache, and since then I have not had the stomach for them. They are most unfilling anyway. Regardless, I shall give you a taste if you wish.”

A smile showed William a rare glimpse of her teeth, “I will take your word on it, Billy. If it is not even filling, then it should be a waste of money. But it was a kind offer.”

A voice out of the static chatter around them called her name, and then Miss Matty had her hand on Peggy’s arm. “Peggy, dear. How are you?”

“I am well. Is this not exciting?”

Miss Matty looked doubtful and afraid and William pitied her inability to accept alteration to her quiet life, even in the form of a mandatory town meeting. He allowed the pair to slip through the cracks of the crowd and remained at the back himself, for his tall vantage point allowed it.

Captain Brown began the presentation, and when the first sheet was pulled away to reveal a map bearing the red path of a railway through Cranford, William’s life took meaning. He wanted to clap and shout even as those around him gasped and cried out in horror.

The railway in Cranford! Oh, he could not wait!

Peggy turned from the front row to look back at him, and he bounced a little on the balls of his feet to show his utter excitement to his friend. She smirked at him. Then, from over by the tea bins, Father’s baritone voice practically silenced the room,

“Those four cottages indeed fall within the bounds of Hanbury Estate, but their history is complicated. They belong to me. I will not see them tumble! I will not betray my tenants!”

It was as if all of the air in the room was taken and without it the sky fell. William knew true hatred in that moment. How could his own father stand there so imperiously and refuse to allow _progress_?

The meeting dispersed quickly, as all the engineers scrambled to rectify their gross overlook, and Father was welcomed as a hero by others like him, too afraid of change to allow it. William stepped into the street and exercised great control not to break something. Within minutes, Erminia was at his side and speaking very plainly, as she knew to do when he was in the grips of his temper. “Go home. Do not make a scene here. Leave Peggy Bell in my charge.”

Ever grateful, William nodded, left the trap for the girls, and set off on foot at a pace to match his rage. His skin burned and his nostrils flared. To think that it had come _this close_ , all that he had ever wanted, only to be stalled by his own parent, the name of Buxton on deeds to worthless cottages.

If fate had been different and his mother had survived his father, then William would be in charge of those deeds. The railway would come to Cranford.

Shame at such a thought only darkened his mood more, and then Father’s carriage rambled past.

William fought the urge to take up a rock and hurl it through the window at the gray head inside. The vehicle slowed down for him, but he resolutely ignored it. Once he had walked past the door without acknowledging the offer for a ride, his father thumped the roof and called to the driver to carry on.

By the time William reached the house, the carriage was pulled out of sight, but Father waited on the lawn. William gave the man a murderous glare and stalked past him into the house, slamming the door.

<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<> 

As Peggy understood it, the matter of Mr. Buxton refusing to give up the cottages had been a row of biblical proportions. She had asked after it at her first opportunity, worried by the dark look of hatred she had spied on William’s face when last she had seen him. Erminia had sighed, but related the argument with dedication to the facts. Peggy had never imagined parent and child speaking to one another like that and was sorry that Erminia had been trapped in the middle of it. Acknowledgment of her personal plight in the matter seemed to greatly please her, and Erminia changed the subject promptly to the purpose of their meeting,

“My shipments from Paris have arrived! Come let us test their beauty.”

Peggy climbed the stairs eagerly, and found that William’s bedroom door was shut tight. She imagined his sorrow at having lost the thing he wanted most—it would match her own, if she was suddenly denied dresses. Therefore, she did not wish to bother him and moved with Erminia quickly to the room at the end of the hall.

“Would you care to try anything on, Peggy?” Erminia asked.

Peggy choked. “Can I?”

“William is not here to voice his opinions on the pointlessness of it. We may be as indulgent as we like.”

Grinning, Peggy nodded eagerly. “Yes, let us. What would you have me wear first?”

Erminia threw open her wardrobe once again and hummed in thought before selecting a particular dress. “I should like to see the shoulders of this on another. I do not wear it often in fear that it pulls strangely across my front.”

“That shall not be a problem for me, I think,” Peggy said, giddy with excitement.

She took the garment behind the changing screen and stripped away her newest dress. There was a small mirror secreted in the corner and in it, Peggy saw her pale skin and the yards of bandages that covered her chest, giving it the shape of a woman, and more at her hips, subtracting the shape of a man. She stepped into Ermina’s dress and shivered as its lace dragged across her skin.

Erminia exclaimed something in French when Peggy stepped out. The alien language made her nervous and she fidgeted at the problematic front of the garment but Erminia stopped her. “It is perfection! You are an angel on earth!”

Peggy blushed darkly.

“It is determined. The dress looks far better on you, and will be used more frequently if you take it home with you.”

Peggy blanched. “I can’t do that! Wha--” she choked, chest heaving under all the bandages, her head shaking frantically. Erminia took both her shoulders and leveled a look at her that said it all,

“You are to be my little pet, Peggy,” she teased with a pat on Peggy’s cheek. “And I will dote on you to my heart’s content.”

“But someone else has already given me her clothes,” Peggy said weakly. She felt like she might be sick. “I cannot accept such charity from everyone.”

“Yes, I did notice the improvement in your wardrobe. They are pretty dresses, but they are not fine. What if William and I should wish to take you to London? What would you wear to the parties?”

“London?” Peggy gasped.

“I for one am longing to get out of this little village. My character is better suited to the larger cities. I prefer Paris above all else but London is very close behind it in my favor.”

“Are you leaving soon?”

“Oh, there are no definite plans yet,” Erminia waved a hand. “It is all fancy for now.”

“Good,” Peggy sighed with relief, “I’ve only just made friends. I would hate to see them gone.”

“Oh, but we would take you with us!”

“My mother and brother would not let me go,” Peggy lamented, “Not even Edward has been that far from home.”

“London is not far,” Erminia replied with lips quirked in amusement. Napoleon bolted into the room and vaulted onto the bed, happily sniffing Peggy, who gave him a welcoming scratch.

“Perhaps not to a world traveler like yourself. But I have seen my home in Scotland and Cranford and that is all.”

“Well, you’re still young. And now you have the favor of the Buxtons and Miss White. Prepare yourself to know much more of life than you expected.”

It was a truly terrifying thought. Peggy had grown comfortable with her expectations and to have them shaken up put her ill at ease. She half wanted to fly back home and resume the lonely but safe solitude she had escaped so readily, but the dominate half yearned for the adventure of London and all that was free to happen in a land so far away.

Napoleon curled into her lap and yawned as if he had been through a great ordeal. Peggy leaned down to give him a loving kiss.

“Now, here is my newest frock,” Erminia said, opening a box with a gold ribbon on it. “It is the latest fashion.”

Peggy looked at the narrow waist of the gown and frowned up at Erminia, “That looks rather small.”

“It will fit once I have tightened the laces of my corset.”

Peggy pursed her lips. She did not wish to say it, but it seemed no one could lace up that tightly. Erminia rang a bell, and a maid appeared with a curtsey. “Anne, could you help me into this? I will need another pair of hands to do up the laces.”

Anne curtsied again and closed the door, for Erminia was undressing in the open. Peggy watched as Erminia kicked aside the morning gown she had shed and took hold of the bed post. Anne’s fingers worked for a second at her back and then, with a foot at Erminia’s lower back, the girl pulled the laces so tight, Erminia yelped and the corset groaned. Napoleon’s ears pricked and he sat up, worried. Two more tugs forced every last modicum of extra breath from Erminia’s lungs, and then Anne tied off quickly.

Erminia released the bedpost, hands falling to her impossibly narrowed waist. With her raven curls falling softly on her shoulders, her pale skin soft as peach, her plush chest ready to spill out of the brace, she was so beautiful that Peggy wanted to cry.

“Thank you, Anne. Marvelous.” Erminia said, and Peggy could tell by her stilted words that it was difficult for her to breathe, but she did not complain. In fact, her smile was one of complete satisfaction. There was sound on the other side of the door, and then a knock. “Erminia?” William called.

“One moment,” Erminia called. Peggy sat Napoleon aside and stood to help steady Erminia as she hurried into the dress with Anne’s aid.

“Is Napoleon with you?” he asked through the wood of the door. The dog barked at the sound of his name.

“Yes, but we are not decent, you will have to wait,” Peggy said. Then to Erminia she said, “I want to change out of this first.”

In the time it took Anne to do up the laces and ribbons on Erminia’s new frock, Peggy had traded the luxuriously fine lace for her plain cotton pink. Anne smiled at them both and opened the door on the sight of William in shirt-sleeves and barefooted. He stepped aside to allow the maid to exit before he came into the room.

“Peggy, I had no idea you were here, your voice just now surprised me. What have you been doing in here?”

“I sent for her the moment my parcels arrived.” Erminia said. “I knew that she would appreciate the goods.”

“It is the most beautiful dress I have ever seen,” Peggy said at once. Indeed, the folds of satin were breathtaking. “And she has been too kind in offering another such prize for me to keep. I am too embarrassed to accept it. Instead, let it stay here and if I ever have need of it, I will come to borrow.”

“You may borrow any that you wish. I know you will take exceeding care with them.”

William had stretched out on the bed to greet his dog, and Peggy saw in the set of his shoulders and mouth that he had come in search of the pet in need of the comfort of unconditional devotion. The sight of him half-undressed in bed had as equal an effect on her as Erminia’s struggle to fit into the Parisian dress had. The ease in which these two paraded around half-dressed put a slew of notions in Peggy’s head that bespoke of married life. To keep such imaginings at bay, Peggy spoke to fill the easy silence,

“You do not look happy at this talk of dresses, Billy. Come, and tell me what is on your mind.”

Erminia sighed loudly and Peggy gave her friend a pointed look, for she was not about to play favorites between them. William’s problems were her problems, just as anything that vexed Erminia would vex Peggy too.

“I never miss my mother as much as I do when I am in the midst of an argument with my father. Nothing ever escalated to these infuriating degrees when she was here. He listened to no one else but her, and now in her absence, he is impossible.”

Peggy took a seat in the window, the sunshine hot on her back. “I often miss my father for the same exact reason. I wonder if ever there was a family where both parents could connect with their child without the aid of the other.”

“Indeed there was,” Erminia said. “My parents were wonderfully in tune with my wants and needs. I never fought them when they were alive.”

“Did they not send you to a school you hate?”

“I never hated Brussels as much as I hated not having my family. It is a diligent school, and I am proud to have matriculated from it, but had my mother lived she would have tutored me herself and I would be a wholly different lady by now.”

“That is not altogether true. Every day you remind me of my Aunt,” William said. To speak to her, he had rolled onto his back, and his position to Peggy put his jaw line in stark relief in the light. She grinned. “You have not shaved closely enough this morning, Billy. I can see hairs on your chinny-chin-chin.”

He scrubbed at his face and laughed a little in embarrassment. “My mind was not on the task. I was at the time practicing a speech for father, but as I have said, he listens to no one.”

“But that is no excuse to look so broken-down. Either keep a beard or do away with it. This in-between is appalling.”

“I am in the comfort of my own home, and I did not know there was company,” William insisted, eyes bright in the sunlight that turned the blonde fuzz on his face golden, “Would you fault yourself for not having your hair properly arranged if a friend of Edward’s slipped into the house unnoticed?”

“Such a thing would never happen. For one thing, Edward has no friends, and even if he had, I never leave my bedroom without everything in order and so the danger is eliminated.”

“I do believe we are receiving a lecture on decorum, Billy Boy,” Erminia teased. Peggy checked a grin of self-consciousness. “I am not correcting you, Erminia. You are perfection. Billy, however, has shown his mortality by showing his flaws with a razor.”

“I imagine you are adept with such an instrument. Might we commandeer his tool kit and show him what a close shave is?” Erminia suggested with a fire that meant it was all that she cared to do at the moment. Peggy giggled and complied, and William’s face stretched in alarm as he laughed, “Oh, I dare you ladies to try. When I am bleeding to death at your clumsy hands, there will be hell to pay to the constables!”

“Of the two of us,” Peggy teased boldly, “one has missed several spots on his face, and the other has not. Who then is clumsy?”

Laughing, Erminia dashed away and returned with the kit from his room. William sat up, eyes glowing with warning. “Stop this nonsense. I will shave myself if it bothers you so.”

“No,” Erminia said. “Do you not wish to see Peggy’s accomplishments?”

He looked at the way Peggy wielded the razor and sighed in compliance. “Do your worst—or rather, do your best not to slice me open.”

They laughed and Peggy took charge of the event. She at once insisted on relocating downstairs for the light and the straight backed chairs of the dining room. Then she requested hot water, and examined the razor’s edge. She could feel their eyes on her as she prepared the lather, warm and thick. Erminia’s fascination was in place, for she knew next to nothing of the practice, but William’s close scrutiny put heat in Peggy’s skin.

When she brushed the foam onto his face, he jumped imperceptivity and laughed lightly at himself. “It is hotter than I thought.”

“Surely you have been told that hot water does a cleaner job of this.”

“Well yes, but surely you do not order hot water every day. It is a trifle when cold water does the trick.”

“Perhaps it is a kindness to your staff, of which I can forgive. But it is I who heats the water at home, and I do not find it a chore to ensure a close shave.”

The bustle of the servants had alerted Mr. Buxton, who stuck his head into the dining room to investigate. A snort of surprise was his reaction to the scene he had stumbled upon. “What on earth?”

William shifted in the chair, his frown of annoyance with the man hidden under the soap on his face. Erminia sat straighter, a bright smile on her face to show the innocence of the game, “Peggy has been challenged to show her skill with a razor, uncle,” she said. “It is sure to be a spectacle.”

She turned to the aged man with a confidence that wielding familiar tools bestowed on her. “I have been shown what to do by my brother, when my father was ill…”

“She boasts of exceptional skill,” Erminia said. “We thought to test it and rectify William’s haphazard work on himself this morning.”

Mr. Buxton could do nothing but laugh at the ideas of youth these days, but his eyes glowed as he looked at the industrious Miss Bell as she stirred the lather. “Well, if the job is well enough I might ask for a shave myself.”

“If I am to be requested for my skill, I might open a barber shop.”

They laughed at her cleverness, and Mr. Buxton, sparing one look at his son who was not acknowledging his existence, elected to return to his previous occupation, leaving the group to their own devices. Erminia propped herself on the table to watch closely as Peggy took up the razor. William’s eyes flashed above the cloud of foam on his face. Peggy smirked,

“Now hold still...”

He leaned back in the chair and visibly forced himself to relax. Peggy adjusted the unfamiliar razor in her grip, and decided where best to begin. The feel of his pulse under her fingers was a tender discovery that threatened to make her blush. She had not considered the delicacy of the project until now. Not only was touching a man in such a familiar way not decent, but she was capable of really hurting him. His vulnerability at her hands quickened her own pulse, and made her mouth dry.

She concentrated on completing the task thoroughly but quickly. The contours of his face were alien to her, and the angle was different, but with close scrutiny and a little more lather, she systematically scrapped away the hair and foam with gentle strokes of the razor, leaving nothing but wet, smoothed skin in her wake, and trying not to notice the way his teal eyes rested so warmly on her as she worked.

When the last of the foam was scrapped away and rinsed in the bowl of steaming, white water, Peggy stepped back and William took up the towel that had protected his clothes during the task. He blotted at first, and then ran the towel along his jaw with a note of surprise. Peggy knew the slickness he felt, for it surprised her some mornings too how the cloth could skim so quickly over her face.

“My god, Miss Bell. How smooth!” He felt with his fingers and laughed. “I do not know if I have been this smooth even as a child! And what deft work with the razor. I was impressed from the first stroke. It was so featherlike and comfortable.”

Erminia reached to feel for herself and snickered. “Job well down, Peggy! You will make a fine barber if the need should arise.”

The group laughed merrily. William’s chest expanded with a deep breath and he looked at Peggy with burning gratitude. “I must say that I feel better for being so cleaned up. I shall cease to wallow in misery from this day onward and meet dark days with meticulous grooming.”

Pleased that she had merit as a friend (for friendship was fundamentally about cheering one another) Peggy could not help a deeply satisfied grin. “That is all I had hoped to teach you.”


	7. Chapter 7

A month prior, Peggy would not have been allowed out of the house when her mother proved too ill to attend church on the last Sunday of August. However, the summer had been one of great change within the Bell cottage, and, having proved that she faired extremely well on her own—indeed that the most risk lay with the nervous attitudes of her mother and brother when navigating their lies—Peggy was allowed to walk to church alone. Edward had speedily accepted the responsibility of nursing his invalid mother in order to earn his own noble exemption from the long trek and boring service.

The morning held promise, and as she walked her thoughts carried her away into a place where all that her heart secretly yearned for was possible. Not even her father’s stern lecture on the impossibility of marriage could reach her there. She floated in serenity, heart content with the beautiful daydream of being a wife and mother, one known for her beauty and her kindness as had been the late Mrs. Buxton.

It was not until Peggy clapped eyes on the actual figure of William where he stood playing with his cufflinks as he participated in conversation with Erminia and Mr. Jynkins that she realized with pure alarm that it had been her handsome friend’s shining smile and golden curly hair she’d imagined in the angelic little faces of her children. With the realization came a vivid idea of how he would give her such children—in a perfect world—with her plush pink chest under his large hands, his racing pulse thrumming against her palms, their lips and bodies crammed together—

“Oh, precious pet!” Erminia’s happy greeting wrung Peggy out of the festering, indecent imagining and deposited her unceremoniously at the front gate of a house of God, the sunshine burning white on everything, seeing it all right down to the darkest secrets in her heart.

 _God forgive me_ , she frantically prayed.

Her presence now made known to others, she was greeted by the Jynkins and then William whose surprise was evident on his expressional face. “Have you traveled alone all this way, Miss Bell?”

Peggy froze on the path, her breath stilled in guilt, her mind a wheel with a broken spoke, crumbling. Erminia came to her and delivered the usual hug and kisses. “I must say I am happy to see you arriving alone today; might this mean you can linger after service for a change?”

With her heart beating as loudly as it was, Peggy could hardly speak, but she managed a little laugh and a regrettable, “Alas, it is because I travel alone that I must hurry back. And besides, my mother is ill and I have left her in Edward’s care. I should not leave them to suffer long in my absence.”

“It is not a serious chill, I hope?” Mr. Buxton inquired. Peggy shook her head. “No, sir. She will be better tomorrow after some herbal tea and rest.”

“That is good,” Miss Matty said. “Still I think I will bring over a pot of soup. Pray, what is your mother’s favorite?”

||||

With due thanks to William’s little game of dressing other men up in women’s clothes, of which he had described to a laughing audience after his lesson in shaving, Peggy could not concentrate on anything the rector said, for William had been correct after all. The man would look very sweet in a bonnet.

To her left, Erminia could sense her great amusement and kept shooting sideways smirks at her, to which Peggy lightly elbowed her. She needed to pay close attention today. She needed to lift her thoughts heavenly, so that they did not fall to such immature and base ideas that had been the rule all morning. She had cleverly sat on Erminia’s opposite side, so that she had a buffer betwixt herself and William. She had been altogether too conscious of his body heat and the breadth of his shoulders so far above her head as they talked about homemade remedies for the sick….

It being a long service, and Erminia possessing but short attention on any one joke, the amusement quickly passed and Peggy succeeded in a heartfelt worship, so that by the time they filed out of the little church, she no longer felt tainted by her own thoughts. The faraway place she had dreamt up on her journey here was demolished and it was the real world Peggy occupied again. A world where she would never marry or have children of her own. A world where she would be aunty to the little angels William gave Erminia instead.

She was square with it again.

“Allow us to see you home,” William said, offering his arm. “You are in shoes that fit today, are you not, Erminia?”

The fashionable young woman pursed her red lips. “You are ever so considerate to think of my poor feet. As it happens, I am wearing my most comfortable pair.”

“Wonderful,” Peggy said. “I should like to have company. It is a long walk and we see each other so infrequently.”

“If your mother would but spare you more often—“

“Yes, that says it, Erminia,” William cut across. “But I think it unfeeling to be so set against her entire family all the time.”

Peggy glanced up at William in gratitude, for she could not have made the same point half as genially as that. Erminia sighed, put in her place for the time being. They walked in a line that took up the whole road, for Peggy made sure to keep a respectable distance from William as they covered all their usual topics, from fashionable shoes to the railways and to fashionable cities full of both.

A sadness was growing in Peggy’s heart with the understanding that Cranford was too small for a pair so great. “You will leave then?”

Her friends traded looks. Erminia’s was far more certain that William’s, but he too had a certain resignation about him as he nodded. “If my father is truly going to stop the railway from coming here then I would rather be anywhere else but trapped in Cranford where the modern world will pass me by. But I will not leave this place happily. This is my home, I was born here, I love it here and it angers me immensely that my own father will force me out.”

“Have you tried speaking with him?” Peggy asked.

William gave her a look similar to what Edward sometimes gave her while lording his knowledge over her naivety. “I know you mean well, but discussion is not always the solver of all problems.”

“I disagree!” Peggy cried angered by the look, “Discussion is the noblest way mankind has at hand for settling our problems with one another. Why do you think we learned language at all and not just how to scream like baboons and hit one another?”

William’s cheeks crinkled with his nose as he shared a look with Erminia and laughed, “Can you imagine my father and I thumping our chests and shrieking?” he laughed more, bringing Peggy to laugh as well.

“I can at least attest on William’s behalf that the arguments never reach that level of savagery,” Erminia promised.

“But tell me, truly, William, did you even _try_ after Johnson’s display of the railway plans?”

“Yes,” he answered, barely hiding his irritation with her, “I attempted to make him see how mired in the past he is, but he would not have it! Our fortune is secured and runs itself, he says. It shouldn’t be tampered with.”

“You attempted to _make_ him see?” Peggy repeated. William sighed and looked away, as if overtired of the conversation and ready to put an end to it. Peggy continued, “Did you, by any chance, raise your voice?”

Sheepishly, he met her eye, “He and I are of the same temper of late.” Her look managed to make him ashamed of himself, but he clung to his position, “There is no way to avoid shouting when we come to a head. He is as unmovable in his opinions as I.”

“You cannot force your ideas onto him, just like he cannot force his onto you. Don’t you see? You cannot _make_ him understand. You have to _help_ him to. He will understand if you guide him along his way.”

William, smiling ruefully, shook his head at the ground, “You are as infuriatingly insightful and level-headed as he is hidebound in tradition.”

Peggy grinned, “I learned it from my father.”

“What was his given name, your father?”

“Why?”

“Because from all I’ve heard of him, he sounds like the most extraordinary man Britain has produced and I should like to name my firstborn after him.”

Peggy laughed, “People should think you strange for naming your child after a minister no one has ever heard of, who lived on meager pay and died before accomplishing anything.”

William frowned at her, “ _You_ are his accomplishment, Peggy Bell. With your intelligence, your favor for progress, and your eye for what’s right, you are a fine addition to the human race. He saw you through your struggles and having come out pure on the other side, you are made a saint.”

She snorted rather un-lady like, “I am not a saint. Stop speaking nonsense. And my father’s name was Seamus, so you see you cannot name your son after him; you are not Scottish.”

He laughed heartedly and slapped his leg as if greatly put out, “Ah, the namesake of my child is hence spoiled by the insuperable barrier of being English instead of Scots! Ah, very well…” he perked up, “Unless, of course, I take a Scottish wife! He will then be half of the heritage and thus readily allowed to be christened Seamus Buxton.”

“Oh, no, Billy, don’t name a child that, please,” Peggy fairly begged through her laughter, for it was but a silly game. Erminia was not Scottish. “ _Seamus Buxton_? It ties the tongue!”

“It does not,” he challenged, “Seamus Buxton.”

“Seamush Buxton,” she said at once, mashing the syllables together in her mouth, “ _That_ is what he’ll be known as. Or Saemux Buston. Or--“

“Yes, alright, I do see what you mean.” William laughed.

Unnoticed by either, Erminia had fallen to the back and watched their easy banter with a quirk in the corner of her lips.

><><><><><><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>> 

_Peggy stood at a bedpost, bracing against it as someone behind her tightened the laces as brutally as Erminia’s girl had tightened hers. The starched paneling squeezed Peggy tighter than her bandages ever managed and the effect was instant comfort, profound security. A feeling of beauty at last._

_Whoever was doing up the laces was strong, pulling tighter and tighter… then those hands were pressing flat against her, sliding down the slopes of her sides, the flatness of her stomach, under the mounds of her breasts and around to her shoulder blades. Though she felt no more than the pressure of the touch through the thick material of the brace, the sweeping motions put a sensual feeling in her bones, a feeling that she could do no wrong._

_Then, with those hands on her shoulder blades the touch ran over the lip of the garment, thumbs sweeping over bare skin at the top of her spine. Warm thumbs massaging the muscle, large, strong--not a maid’s._

_William Buxton’s voice was soft velvet, “Miss Bell,” as he spoke, his hands wrapped around and down her caged ribs and his fingertips sank into the coarse blond curls at the apex of her thighs. Suddenly she was without all clothing but for the corset and Billy’s fingers. His voice in her ear, “May I?”_

_She nodded, voiceless. Those fingertips, swirling in her hair, raced to follow the bottom hem of her corset around behind to her bare bottom. He meshed the flesh in his fingers like dough and then, thumb sweeping down to rest on her fundament, his lips kissed the top of her spine as his thumb went in._

_Peggy was the orange, bursting with juice and delicious flavor._

Gasping awake, Peggy needed a moment to ascertain the faint shapes of her pillows, blankets, and further furniture of her room in the dim light from her open window. A dream. Her heart pounded as if she’d just run up from the brook with a pail of water in each hand. She rolled, needing fresh air, and detected the alarmingly, firm, and seeping weight in her lap.

She shivered and grimaced. It was a dilemma that had plagued her more so in the beginning of her adolescence and tapered off with the novelty of it, but of late she might have been fourteen again with the intensity of the situation. It was the dreams; such had not been present at fourteen when she had known no one but her family. To have another featured—responsible—for the sensations gave it all a greater power than Peggy’s will to ignore it.

With face buried in the pillow in shame and weakness, she pressed her hips into the mattress, gasping slightly at the rush. She rutted slowly, heart pounding, heat building in the confines of her covers, making her sweat, making her breaths rough gasps for air. The pressure and the friction made her thighs shake, and her endurance wavered, she could not keep the steady pace and desperation made her wail lowly into her pillow.

_Miss Bell, may I?_

She broke into the heat, shuddering and shivering and choking until it was over. She did not care to rest on top of the mess, and climbed instantly out of bed. It was early yet, but now that it was a sheet-washing day, the extra hours were a blessing. She cleaned herself, re-applied her bandages to cover the now placid extremity, chose her favorite dress and fixed her hair before stepping out of her bedroom to fetch the hot water for her shave.

The house was as silent as the grave, for neither Mother nor Edward woke until the sun had crested the tree tops and infiltrated their windows. Peggy worked quietly in the silence and tried not to think about what she had just performed and to what thoughts. The little mirror she shared with Edward sat before her on the table, angled to allow her to better see beneath her chin as she deftly removed the prickly heads of hair.

Peggy had inherited from her father a flaxen beard far darker than her pale hair. It was also very course; courser than William’s had been under her fingers. His had been prickly, but more like fuzz than this sparse but rough growth, and fairer too, only noticeable in the light…

So distracted did she become by the memory of William’s neck under her fingers, his eyes at close proximity, looking up at her with trust, and all of it on the heels of the dream she had just had, her focus slipped, and with it her fingers.

She hissed as the blade took a knick out of her jaw. Bright red drops fell to the milky water below. She dropped the razor to the table and staunched the bleeding. Her expression in the glass was dark with anger. She had not had an accident in three years and now this all because of—

Muttering, she resumed the shave and managed to complete the task without further injury. The cut slowly bled as she worked, dropping another crimson blotch to the water before she was finished and was able to staunch the bleeding again. It was a deep cut but stopped its bleeding soon enough. It was not, however, easy to disguise. She applied her beeswax as best she could around the area, but the wound set askew her usual symmetrical features.

When Edward saw it an hour later at breakfast, he scoffed at her, “You should be more careful, stupid girl, what are you supposed to say happened when people see that, huh? You’ll get us run out of town again!”

He had not bothered himself with the razor today, she noticed. She put the injured chin forward defiantly. “I will go nowhere until it is better healed, Edward. I am not daft.”

“Then you’re intentions are to skip church tomorrow?” he asked dubiously. Peggy paused and he smirked. “I thought not.”

She turned on him. “I will not let one little cut keep me from devotion. And father’s grave will need tending to since I had left the job for another day last week.” Even as she spoke, she felt her stomach turn for neither noble excuse was true. She wanted to go to church for the simple reason that her friends would be there. William…

“Be sure that you have a ready excuse for what it could have been, Peggy, just in case,” Mother ordered, for the remark about Father’s grave had brought the man back into the house, and he would not have allowed Peggy to be kept from devotional service. The woman stood, signaling the end of breakfast, “Now go fetch enough water to fill the wash tub. I will gather the rest of the bed clothes.”

The cut looked better by the following day and Peggy barely thought about it after she had finished covering it as best as able. Mother had regained her strength, but Edward claimed to have come down with the same little bug and so avoided church for the second week in a row with promises that he would review his bible. Peggy and her mother walked in silence to the church house.

<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>> 

Miss Matty, ever helpful and observant of the wishes of the young (for she evidently remembered being so herself) was quick to draw Mrs. Bell to the side and speak of recipes, allowing William and Erminia to spirit Peggy away to the other side of the church yard. It was shaded here, and William preferred it over today’s sunshine. For the first of September, it was frightfully hot.

Peggy and Erminia were giggling happily over something Mr. Jynkins had said about India, but William was drawn out of the conversation by a most alarming observation.

“What ever happened here?” he lifted her face to better see the ugly little mark on her chin before his senses caught up to him and explained all. He felt himself darken as he retracted his hand from her baby smooth skin. “Apologies, I know exactly what it is now that I apply common sense to it. Never mind.”

He noted the way she blushed, and he considered himself to have his foot in his mouth. Erminia, smirking, resumed her thoughts on India and how she would not be dragged there with life in her body. Peggy, though ignorant of travel and true foreigners, insisted that Calcutta could be nothing short of Paris or Rome in secrets and wonders.

“That is what Mr. Jynkins alluded to with his little speech of the colonies,” Erminia said, “But I have heard far more detailed accounts of that country and I shan’t be dissuaded from my belief that Paris is the best city in the world, followed closely by London and then Brussels and then, perhaps, Geneva.”

The glow of fascination in Peggy’s eyes as she listened to Erminia captured William’s complete attention. He had never seen anyone look upon another person with such raptures, and a singular thought hit him so suddenly he nearly choked on his tongue.

“Erminia!” Mr. Buxton was with Sir Charles, and so her summons could be nothing short of another opportunity to show her off. She never grew tired of it, though she pretended to as she departed for center stage to a grander audience. William moved unconsciously to fill her spot, plucking up the nerve to ask what was in his head,

“I have only just thought of something to ask you and it is rather alarming.”

Peggy smirked happily. “You are always promising alarm. Go on then, speak it. I promise not to be too shocked.”

“Do you fancy women or men?” he asked bluntly. It was a matter of slight consolation to him to see that he had at last succeeded in shocking her sensibilities. “You can see why I ask, for you are in the rights to like either…or both,” William’s eyebrows crammed together at the consideration. Peggy grinned crookedly and William concluded his theory, “Are you a woman in a man’s body who likes women?”

She looked down bashfully and did not lift her eyes as she confessed, “I am more technically a woman in a man’s body who likes men.”

His eyebrows dropped as he considered the information. He supposed the open expression he had gleaned a moment ago had been a little more envy than desire for Erminia, and that eased him. He predicted and dreaded a day when Erminia would break a heart without even batting an eyelash.

“Does this secret disgust you?” Peggy asked in a little voice. William looked down into her doll face, the frightened look with those expressive eyes, the little knick from her razor that proved there was more to her beneath the surface.

“No,” he said, for it did not.

He had remembered those friends from school and pictured her as she might have been with a less generous father. Forced to be _Gregory_ she’d be a scrawny, unimpressive man with the same sweetness about her. One would practically _expect_ her to attach herself to another man in such a way.

The act of sodomy, a fuzzy understanding next to his vivid comprehension of the marital act, flickered across his mind, and another puzzle revealed itself. What had she and her father decided about it in their new philosophies?

Loud, pleased laughter erupted from Erminia’s audience, and both Peggy and William turned to smile in that direction for a moment. Then William scuffed a shoe across a bed of clovers. “Do you hold hopes to one day have a special man to carry on with?” he asked.

Peggy looked truly alarmed now and opened her mouth to respond with prompt propriety— _Sir, I would never fool around so indecently_! (William could hear it plainly in his head already)—but then she paused without a sound, looking pensive.

William scuffed the clovers again and shook his curly head, for the question had been absurd for one who had had no intentions of ever leaving that cottage. “Of course a refined and kind-hearted soul such as yourself would never consider such sordid affairs. Forgive me.’’

“I would never intentionally do anything against God,” she said, honestly, “But the phrasing of your question gives me pause. Do I hold hopes? Yes, of course I do. I long to have someone… I think people are made to belong to one another… but I know that in reality, there are spinsters and old bachelors enough and that true happiness can exist outside of intercourse.”

 “Of course, of course,” he assured quickly, “Yes. And what better place for the unmarried than Cranford? The situation is abundant here and all are kind and supportive.”

“Yes, I love Cranford. I feel welcome here.”

William’s heart panged for his little friend. He did not like the thought of her being forever alone. He had no doubt that her fortitude of spirit would enable her to shoulder that kind of heavy fate bravely, but why must it be so? She possessed far greater opportunity than most men in her persuasion, for she was as pretty outwardly as she was inwardly, and but for one little secret that proved contrary, she was an ideal wife.

Interrupting the deep reflection both had fallen into, Mrs. Bell called to Peggy to come along. William inhaled and sought for a handle on the moment. Peggy turned herself for home obediently.

“Food for thought,” she said brightly, dropping a graceful curtsey, “Good day, Billy.” Her smile promised she was not saddened by the talk of dismal prospects but rather fortified by it. William smiled back at her, “Good day, Miss Bell.”

><<>><<>><<>><<>><<> 

A week later, William was by midday too agitated to stay indoors, despite the gloom of the day. With the clouds leasing a light drizzle on him in increments, William vaulted shuttlecocks into the hedge with all of his strength. His muscles were tensed with pent-up energy, and he had snapped at every one in the house at least once.

He was frustrated beyond himself.

Angered not only by his father’s antagonistic roll in the story of the railroad, William was also irritated on a far more personal level. His mornings were usually languid, and if he had not fallen to sleep in fantasy the night before, then his usual custom was to begin the day with the same ritual. He found the act had the peculiar ability to be either a bringer of sleep for the night or of energy for the day; it was whichever he needed it to be.

However, the last several times that William had achieved stark arousal, his mind had chosen to suddenly fill with Peggy Bell and run in circles with very shocking ideas until the need had reversed itself. And all of this happening even before the young man had heard it straight from her that her body yearned for a man’s touch.

Before that particular secret, William had been forced (during these inexplicable wanderings of his mind)  to resort to reading or writing to bypass his disturbing arousal, for he had not been comfortable with carrying on to the vivid image of one he saw on the regular, never mind the shocking facts that clouded this particular acquaintance. Peggy Bell was to be his friend, and to defile her in thought was the same thing as doing it in person.

Now knowing she longed to be guided to physical release by a man, the simple truth was that William had not had a pleasant repose since, and it was starting to affect his mood.

In fact, he had been so frustrated that he’d gone to bed in broad daylight and attempted to be done with it regardless of who or what was in his mind and whether or not it would be a sin. Yet it’d been more work than usual to slip into the sheer pleasure of it. That elusive all-consuming desire, which William had always been able to call upon and draw from with great ease, had seemed dried up.

Nothing he had set his mind to--even when he gave in and allowed Peggy center stage--had seemed capable of buoying his pleasure. Oh, the thought of her in general and perhaps her eyes and her crooked smile started a pleasant feeling fast enough, like being dragged under into the pulling waves of pleasure… but then he had thought of her breasts only to remember she hadn’t any… and her legs only to think what she concealed under her skirt, and he had been deposited right where he had started. Pent up and discombobulated as to a quick fix.

In the end, his arm had worn out before his need ever relented; the blissful unwinding which he was so desperately in want of remained out of his reach. And thus, he was out of doors and attempting to work off his various frustrations with exercise. He had resumed to taking it out on the ugly little bobbles Erminia had made of their wine corks. There was a basket full, and there was some satisfaction in smashing them with the badminton racquet so hard that they went to pieces mid-flight.

When at last the clouds overhead broke into a steady downpour, he was forced to give up the therapeutic thrashing. He darted inside and shook the drops from his curls, rubbed at a crick in his neck, and wondered how it was that his life had gotten so wretched so very quickly.

He could hear Erminia conversing with father, the pair of them carrying on with life as if the bottom had not fallen out of it. Napoleon came sniffing around the corner and peered at him for a moment before bounding forward. William scooped him up and allowed the dog to lick the water from his face.

A blot of red on the side table caught his eye, and he put the dog aside to investigate. It was a note from Miss Matty. He read it once quickly, and then sat to read it a second time, a smile on his face. It was a well-written plea for change, imploring others to follow her lead and experience a trip on the rails before laying final judgment against the endeavor.

Napoleon grew bored with being ignored and ran off to win Erminia’s attention. The date and time of Miss Matty's excursion was today, after tea.

With deepest affection for the brave Miss Matty and her well written plea for change, William stepped into the parlor to announce his plans. Father groaned and made leave of the room rather than offer his opinion on what he deemed a silly thing. Erminia, having not heard of this plan until now, was made excited by the idea that the old lady had been persuaded at last.

“We must be there with her as support,” William said. “And to help her understand all that frightens her.”

“We must hurry then,” Erminia said, noting the time, “If we are to get all the way to Peggy’s and back to Hanbury in time to be included in the party.”

William had not intended to include Peggy in this, and Erminia’s assumption put a flip in his stomach but he offered no outward reaction. Of course Peggy would love to come, and he could not deny even his most confounding friend a chance to ride the rails.


	8. Chapter 8

The rain had not fallen enough to even wet the dirt beneath the trees, but the sky was still grey and fog lurked in the dampened fields. Having been fetched from her chores with the sense of emergency, Peggy now walked with her two best friends to Hanbury Halt. They kept a steady trot for it was William who set the pace. His eagerness to experience the railway was evident and thus, fair grounds for teasing.

 “I think it must have been the rain that had him in a mood all morning,” Erminia teased, “For I have not seen him do more than grimace since he came down to breakfast.”

They both looked to the gentleman for confirmation of this, and he somewhat uncharacteristically looked at the ground and mumbled something about a poor night’s rest.

“I hope that you are not nurturing hatred for your father as you dream, Billy. It is never wise to go to bed angry.”

With a dry snort, the words were seemingly out of him without thought, for the moment he uttered them, “It is not dreams of _my father_ that keep me awake,” he looked as if he would pay any sum of money to retract the words.

Erminia gasped prettily and looked wide eyed to Peggy, a quirk in the corner of her mouth. “Then who have you been dreaming of, Billy Boy?”

He colored darkly and laughed, embarrassed. Peggy, face warm herself as she deliberately did not think about the things that had kept her up at night of late, gave her female friend a reproachful look. “Do not tease him so, Erminia. Of course it was you, but you should not be speaking of this with me here. It is not proper to involve another in your personal affairs.”

The pair had stopped walking with hard noises of shock as Peggy spoke and, having traveled several steps ahead of them, she stopped and looked back with a shrug she managed to make nonchalant. “I will not be offended so long as this marks the last occasion—“

“Peggy!” Erminia interjected loudly, “My dear girl, you have got it entirely wrong!”

“Yes, good gracious me, it was not my sister I dreamt of either!”

Peggy blinked rapidly at her two best friends, the most beautiful couple in all of Cranford (indeed, England) as if their aghast looks of disgust would vanish and put the future right again, where the two would marry and give her godchildren to dote upon. “Your sister?” she asked, unable for a moment to comprehend the sentiment.

“Yes, Erminia is in my heart as a sister, of course she is, we have grown up together like twins. How could she be anything else?”

“But…”

Erminia laughed. “Oh, suddenly everything has become clear. Billy, I do believe that all of Cranford holds this opinion of us. We shan’t blame Peggy alone.”

“It is not such a strange custom,” Peggy insisted. “I was under the impression the betrothal was in place since birth. Do gentleman not take on wards in hopes of securing the dowry as payment for their troubles?”

“I am sure other gentlemen do, but not my uncle.”

“And if that is indeed his plans, then he is as mistaken in this regard as he is in the railway.”

“Oh,” Peggy said, dropping her eyes to the ground and trying to remember to breathe. She was so embarrassed. “Forgive me. But I felt sure of it—I cannot think now of any instance where it was made clear, but there has been nothing to contradict such an idea until now.”

“My,” Erminia said. “We will have to work on that, won’t we?” she said to her brother, who nodded his curly head. “I shan’t want to scare off any potential suitors for you, Erminia.”

“Nor I any sweet girl who might catch your eye,” she said with pointed meaning. Peggy began to laugh and could not stop. They resumed their journey with great amusement, and joked easily on the matter until they had made it to Hanbury Halt and the great number of surprises that awaited them there.

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The first surprise was William’s own father. Mr. Buxton had by a miracle, chosen to examine the railway after all. The sight of him standing so meekly on the platform softened the resentment in William’s breast and he felt he had a father again; a sentiment that could not have come a moment too soon, for the second surprise was just around the corner.

“Room for two more in first class!” Captain Brown called to their straggling group. Erminia sped up to overtake them and won one of the seats. Father took the last. William opened a door in second class for Peggy with a genteel, “Miss Bell,” and joined her there, latching the door. The compartment was small and bare, with bench seats on either side. Peggy sat with her back to the engine, and William sat across from her.

With immense chugs and hisses, the vessel began to move, its whistle a piercing cry that made Peggy jump and laugh. Excited at the prospect of steam power and the speed it promised, William exhaled slowly as indeed the landscape began to slide by with such fluidity that it made the stomach waver. And still, they were gaining speed.

The rhythmic chug and chunk of the machine pulsed through William like music and he had not thought he could be more romanced by the railroad. Already they were at the common fields, and the exhilarated passengers shared shining looks.

William noted the death grip by which he held the bench and forced himself to relax. Peggy did the same, and then went beyond. She dared to stand up, wobbly at first, but then upright and beaming. William quickly joined her, for it was as safe to stand on a train as it was a boat. He found that it gave one the feeling of sea-legs as well.

A sudden bump as the engine changed gears threw them together. They caught hands to steady one another, laughing elatedly. Her hands were so small in his, her strength a fragile thing. Another bump and grind and Peggy stumbled back. Her glove slipped off in William’s grip. She laughed openly and William stared, surprised and transfixed at her beauty.

It was a shock to his heart, a sudden, heavy weight in his groin, a spike to his blood. Something that had already been in his heart lit up into a bright blaze like kindle wood, and the rest of his being (what had before been tame) now leapt and danced and surged and writhed, now a wild thing _worshiping_ the burning flame.

Peggy was the flame.

How could he ever forget that Peggy Bell shown with such splendor? How could he have ever let the physical hinder his regard for this spiritual loveliness?

The whole of William’s existence suddenly fell into sharp relief against his purpose in the world. How perfect then, that the railway had led him to his destined conclusion in the swift, effective way of its design? Giddiness swept over him. He knew it all now, every dark part of his soul basked in light, and it was not as alarming as he had feared, though the weight of it all made it rather difficult to draw breath. He was not worried by the constriction in his lungs; his breath seemed irrelevant next to the new wonders he felt.

She--his dear little friend, with her crooked smile and inspiring bravery-- _she_ was the endeavor he could devote his life to.

The train pulled to a stop, and the final little bump pushed them both a step closer. Peggy’s bare hand took hold of his knuckles were he squeezed her warm little glove.

“Peggy Bell,” he spoke, near a rasp. Her skin was so smooth and warm. His heart leapt at the small point of contact; his hot blood rushed, and his body twitched for hers.

“Yes?” she asked, eagerly.

“I love you,” he confessed. It was the simplest thing, and it was so rooted in his being it must have been there for some time. He wondered that it had taken this long to voice it. He could say it a million times. There was never true certainty before this. “Will you _please_ be my wife?”

<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>> 

“What?” she nearly laughed the word but it felt as if she were choking. She could scarcely breathe with his eyes clapped on her in this intense fashion. He did not blink, and his voice held in it the same sonorous conviction as before, “I am asking you to marry me.”

“I heard you,” she gasped, smiling though beginning to shake, “but I do not believe you know what you are saying.”

At last he looked away, a brief glance to the sky, a shift as he looked inwardly before returning his gaze to her face. “I have never known anything like I know this,” he confessed in a voice that sounded like the most honest part of her friend, the hidden part that had shared his own secrets in exchange for hers, “I have fallen in love with you, Peggy.”

Her heart might have burst. A ringing sense of numbness spread over her body with such rapidity that in one moment she was aware of their bare hands touching, and then in the next she was detached from the entire scene and floating away.

 _William loved her back._ This was so in line with her most indulgent fantasies that her mind swept off with ideas of marriage and children with golden curls--

The thing that grounded her again was the sudden unlatching of the door; Captain Brown had made free to open their compartment from the outside. With the clamor of noise came sense. It did not matter if William loved her, what he was proposing was absolutely impossible. She released his hands forthwith, snatched back her glove.

Captain Brown, engaged in the business of unloading all of the passengers, did not notice the small scene, or there might have been inquiries. Peggy thanked God for that as she wiggled her fingers back into the glove and put at her back William, who did not speak a word against her sudden chilled silence for which she was also grateful.

After a general discussion of the experience was had, with all agreeing that it was indeed a positive thing—William made, for the sake of time, an abridged version of his usual passionate speech on the merits of the industry—and then the moment she could Peggy put forward that her mother expected her speedy return.

Erminia instantly began talk of her own urgent projects at home, and Peggy suspected for the first time that Erminia meant for all of this to happen, that the woman intended more to develop by leaving William the sole responsibility of returning Peggy to where they had plucked her. Peggy wished dearly that Erminia would come along and be a buffer, to keep the nonsense on the train from following her home.

Alas, Mr. Buxton invited all to the house for a late tea, rendering his finely accomplished ward indispensable to him. Peggy accepted William’s aid, and they trotted off together, this time with Peggy setting the urgent pace.

As soon as they were alone, William huffed a noise of blended annoyance and pain, “You have grown angry with me.”

It bubbled up into Peggy’s chest all at once, the rage and misery she had not felt since she was thirteen. “You cannot want me.”

“Of course I can,” was his instant response. His words had an edge to them, something sharp like ice but burning like red coals. And his eyes. His eyes would not stop gazing at her like he could see the very center of her soul. “And I do.”

“You do not realize for what you are asking!” she nearly spat, attention on the ground rather than meet his eyes, voice jolting as she nearly ran. His legs were so long he merely lengthened his stride to keep up. Her jaw was tight with the force it took to speak, “Have you forgotten what I confided to you that day in your drawing room?”

“It is not an easy thing to forget, Peggy.”

“Yet you march along here beside me, and you smile at me, as if asking me to marry you is perfectly natural!”

His fingers touched her arm not to restrain her, only to connect her to him as he stopped, “Isn’t marriage the _natural_ course in love?”

Peggy turned on him so forcefully that he retreated a step, kicking up the damp dust.  “You would have us stand in a house of God and make vows? Do you not _see_ the sin in that?”

“Peggy!” his face smiled, his voice laughed, “You speak as if you believe yourself unworthy of marriage!”

A great many things clamored inside of Peggy in that moment. _Rise above it, Peggy Bell._ Her mind reeled and her heart heaved. _Love without marriage is still a sacred thing_. Miss Matty’s voice rang loud and clear through Peggy’s head. Such love was all she would be allowed to have and she’d made her peace with that. She’d learned to be satisfied with a small portion of the happiness in the world. And here this handsome man stood, bold as brass attempting to take it from her. Attempting to have her strive for that which circumstance would never truly allow her to have.

Whatever unspoken, unclaimed connection that had been between them had been her special piece of sacred magic, yet now William insisted she try for more than her lot. It would upset God to do so, surely. There were _rules_. While a world of contentment was plausible, not everyone could be _blissfully_ happy; there would then be no context in which bliss could be appreciated.

Stepping closer she fairly hissed, “We might spend the whole of our lives deceiving Cranford of my sex, but we will never fool God. Two _men_ cannot marry!”

“But you are not a man!” William cried loud enough for his voice to reverberate off the trees. She looked about frantically, but they were alone on the lane, far from anything. “You are _Peggy_! You are the most beautiful _woman_ I have ever known!”

“But--I am not--in _woman’s form_!” She choked the ugly truth out of her closed throat, the taste of bile thick on her tongue. In frustration she was not gentle with her buttons as she opened the top of her dress. William’s eyes widened and he choked a sound as she pulled the linen from her bodice to reveal the flatness of her chest under the sudden excess of fabric. His apparent shock and confusion burned her heart to ashes; she might as well have seen his love shrivel and die, “Shall I lift up my skirt and show you the bandages that I use to bind it back between my legs? Would _that_ ensure you wouldn’t forget?”

He looked away, his Adam’s apple pulsed, cheeks tinting pink, and his voice was shaky but clear, “I have never forgotten, Peggy.”

She returned the stuffing as best she could to her breast bandage, though it would never be as neat as before without a complete rewrapping. Her hands were shaking and she could not look at him, didn’t dare it. Tears already blurred her vision. “Then how could you ask me to marry you?”

“How could I not?” the raw sincerity in the words choked her, and her skin lifted in prominent bumps of anticipation as more honesty poured out of him like rays from the sun, “Yours is a kind of beauty that begins on the inside and shines outward. I want to give my heart to that glow inside of you, Peggy. I do not care what form it is anchored in.”

She blinked hard, and attempted to hold onto the lessons of her father. It did not matter how wonderful this sounded. It was not possible; her traitorous body could be shared with no one she wanted. “You are making a fool of yourself,” she quipped, but her voice lacked any strength, shook on every word.

His eyes were woeful and shining. “By offering you my heart, and my hand, and the rest of my life?”

“We _cannot_ marry, or even be known to anyone as being anything but acquaintances to each other or else when it gets out you will be ruined!--” a hiccup stole her words, and she shuddered, tears dropping to the ground “--Please, Billy, leave me. Let me continue to love you from afar where I cannot hurt you!”

She ran away from his radiance with a wet face and trembling lips. His voice called her named several times before the lane bent around a stand of trees and they were severed at last. She did not slow down.

<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>> 

William sat for a while in the lane, flummoxed.

Throughout life, one is given the impression that a marriage proposal will always be accepted with smiles or even tears of joy--to have been rejected at all was a blow. But then again, he had to allow that this was no typical proposal, and Peggy was no typical girl. General customs did not apply here and by what model he was meant to operate he did not know, but somehow the complete mystery of it only made William Buxton want the answers ever more. By God he would solve this puzzle and be rewarded with the sweetest prize.

He began to walk as he framed his argument. His direction was for the stream beyond Peggy’s cottage. She would be too upset to go home and face inquiries and would be at her special place. Of this he was certain, for he knew Peggy Bell better than anyone on this earth.

His theory proved correct. He found her sitting on her bridge, face a blotchy red mess, utterly still.

She was so deep in thought he was upon her before she saw him. She sprang to her feet but did not have a voice. William spoke quickly,

“You said that we cannot be together because if it gets out then I will be ruined. But what of you, my love? What happens to you when they know? Wouldn’t you be ruined, too?”

“Yes--but my family and I will leave,” her voice was raw, scratchier than he had ever heard it, and though it was not as feminine as usual, it was somehow the weaker for it. William longed to put his arms around this frightened, broken soul, but like a wild animal she was poised to run from him again and so he did not move. Visibly shaking, she gulped and cleared her throat, tried again in a softer voice, “We will start over. We have done it once before. And when we run out of places to go in Britain then we will go to Europe.”

“I could not bear you leaving Cranford without me,” he declared. Indeed the thought put shivers down his spine. She would be so far away and so alone, and ever in danger of being found out without the protection of friends, without the protection he had to offer.

“Billy—“ she tried to sound strong, but looked so fragile with tears racing down her face.

“You risk your ruination every day in pursuit of your happiness,” he interjected softly, in wonder.  She hiccupped. He moved closer, voice strengthening with his conviction that this was right. “Why shouldn’t I be allowed to do the same? Let us marry and face the threat together, and if the day should come, then we will face the consequences _together as well,_ as husband and wife.”

She sobbed and moved closer to him. William surged around her, clasping her head to his chest. “Be my wife, Peggy. Let me love you day and night like you deserve.”

She sobbed again in surrender and clung to him, and William had never in his life felt stronger or happier or more complete.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To Be Continued Soon. In Part Two we will see William fight for the right to wed his love, and along they way face the consequences of his sincere, but reckless, vows to her.


End file.
